Monday, March 24 : Strømøy Racing’s Bartek Marszalek has been knocking on the door of a major breakthrough in the UIM F1H2O World Championship for several seasons. Twice a fifth-place finisher in the Drivers’ Championship, the Pole has been a regular in the Q3 qualifying sessions and claimed his first Grand Prix win and pole position at the same race in 2023.
This season, the 41-year-old Warsaw-based driver will be embarking upon his 14th year in the top echelon of the sport since making his debut in a Baba boat with Team Nautica back in 2011. That year he competed in four of the seven races but it was an inauspicious start to say the least: Bartek retired twice, was out of the points in one race and picked up a solitary point for finishing 10th in Ukraine.
Undeterred, he returned to action with the Singha F1 Racing Team alongside Valerio Lagiannella, Rhys Coles and Francesco Cantando in 2013 and finished four of his five races, the best result being seventh overall in Sharjah. The Pole broke into the overall top 10 in 2014 by finishing equal seventh with Portuguese veteran Duarte Benavente as a member of the Motorglass F1 Team alongside Cantando and Marco Gambi. His best result out of five successive points scores was fifth overall in Liuzhou.
It was back to the drawing board for the next two seasons with the DAC and the Motorglass team and Blaze Performance. In 2015, he finished 15th and repeated the feat the following year with several retirements and finishes in the lower reaches of the top 10.
Bartek was back inside the top 10 in 2017 with a pair of fifth-place finishes in Portugal and Sharjah but two retirements and a DNS proved costly in 2018 and seventh place in Abu Dhabi was the highlight of the year.
Representing the Emirates Racing Team alongside Marit Strømøy was a major boost for the Pole’s career and the former F2 and endurance front-runner finished fifth in the Drivers’ Championship behind Shaun Torrente, Jonas Andersson, team-mate Strømøy and Thani Al-Qamzi. Emirates Racing also claimed third in the Teams’ Championship with Bartek claiming his first podium finish on Khaled Lagoon in Sharjah.
Global travel disruption put paid to any racing in 2020 and Bartek resumed his F1H2O career by finishing eighth in 2021. But the best was yet to come and a stunning finish to the 2022 season with third and second places in the two Sharjah races lifted the Pole to equal sixth in the rankings.
With confidence high after the two UAE podiums, he picked up where he left off at the start of 2023 and claimed a memorable pole position at the inaugural Kopiko Grand Prix of Indonesia on Lake Toba. Despite strong winds and tough opposition, Bartek was able to hold on and seal a maiden Grand Prix victory. But a retirement followed in Zhengzhou and the season petered out with a distant sixth-place finish.
The former Polish Formula 250 champion’s last F1H2O podium came at the 2024 Regione Sardegna Grand Prix of Italy although he enjoyed the new Sprint Race format. During the course of the season, he picked up valuable points in those shorter races to add to a pair of fifths in the Grand Prix in Indonesia and Vietnam, third in Olbia and fourth in Zhengzhou.
Now a veteran of 61 Grand Prix starts and five career podiums, Marszalek will be aiming to push on to the next level in 2025 and be regularly challenging for podium finishes.
