Tuesday, July 2: This year’s UIM F1H2O World Championship is heating and is becoming one of the most exciting for several years with a handful of drivers in with a shout of claiming the Drivers’ Championship and as many teams still in contention to win the UIM F1H2O Teams’ World Championship.
The Sharjah Team and Team Vietnam are currently locked together on 94 points and have a 14-point cushion over Strømøy Racing with the Victory Team a further eight adrift in fourth. Team Sweden (now Vietnam) dominated the series last season and the once all-conquering Team Abu Dhabi has made a slow start and holds seventh in the points’ standings behind the China CTIC Team and the Red Devil-SMC F1 Team.
No one team has been dominant this season with the Sharjah Team’s rookie Rusty Wyatt snatching a stunning win on the final lap from Stark and Jonas Andersson in Indonesia, the Victory Team’s Erik Stark controlling the pace in Vietnam and Wyatt coming out on top again at the recent Regione Sardegna Grand Prix of Italy in Olbia.
Both Andersson of Team Vietnam and Peter Morin of the China CTIC Team have delivered consistent performances in each of the races, while Strømøy Racing’s Bartak Marszalek and Marit Strømøy have improved markedly with Marit now really getting to grips with the new Mercury V8 four-stroke engine in her DAC.
What this season has shown is that a championship that was once dominated by Team Abu Dhabi (Teams’ champions in 2012 and 2017-2022) is now wide open with drivers and boat performance more evenly matched than ever before.
The Sharjah Team and Team Vietnam may have the slight edge heading into the autumn but there are a number of drivers capable of snatching podium finishes and the outcome of the UIM F1H2O Teams’ Championship is likely to go down to the final few laps of the season’s finale on Khaled Lagoon in Sharjah on December 8th.
