Saturday, October 19: Team Vietnam’s Jonas Andersson took full advantage of retirements for his title rivals Rusty Wyatt and Erik Stark to lead a yellow-flag interrupted New Development Grand Prix of Zhengzhou-China from start-to-finish on the Yellow River on Saturday afternoon.
The crucial 15th career win for the Swede after an accident for Stark and a mechanical issue for Wyatt has given the defending World Champion a three-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship to take to the final round in Sharjah at the start of December. Team Vietnam now also leads the Teams’ Championship from the Sharjah Team and Strømøy Racing.
Andersson said: “It was actually very easy. I was taking it easy because it was very rough, a strange course. One side was flat, but very windy, and the other side was rough. After the parade lap, I made a decision to change the prop and get more speed and acceleration and it went fantastic. The boat was very easy to drive. When I had a six or seven-second lead, I was trying to take it easy. It was so rough and then it is very easy to break the boat. I am super happy for the team because we worked like hell this weekend. Now we are back on the top where we should be.”
The high rate of attrition in blustery conditions failed to prevent the China CTIC Team’s Peter Morin from holding off the two-time World Champion Sami Seliö to snatch second position. That result enabled the Frenchman to move ahead of Stark and into third in the Drivers’ Championship.
Morin said: “It was a very difficult race. The water conditions were not good, very much windy and we needed to be careful. We could not attack Jonas. It was important to stay in second place. It was a rough race but we started second and I am happy to finish second.”
Seliö added: “It was a very hard race and we finish on the podium. The minimum target is always to finish on the podium. When I finish, most of the time I can do it. It was great!”
Strømøy Racing’s Bartek Marszalek and Seliö’s Red Devil SMC F1 team colleague Ferdinand Zandbergen rounded off the top five.
Maverick Racing’s Alexandre Bourgeot enjoyed his best race of the season with a sixth-place finish, with Marit Strømøy bringing the four-stroke DAC home in seventh, ahead of the F1 Atlantic Team duo of Ben Jelf and Duarte Benavente, the Sharjah Team’s Filip Roms and Cédric Deguisne.
A chaotic start saw a collision between Ahmad Al-Fahim and Erik Stark take each other out on the opening lap and Brent Dillard of the China CTIC Team barrel-roll into retirement.
The race
Blustery conditions prevailed on the race course on Saturday morning. The race was scheduled for 32 laps and conditions actually improved slightly during the afternoon.
Engine changes for Deguisne, and Jelf meant that they started at the rear of the field behind Zandbergen (who had crashed in qualifying) and Bourgeot (who had not recorded a qualifying lap).
After his Sprint race accident on Friday, Team Vietnam’s Stefan Arand was sidelined, as was Team Abu Dhabi’s Rashed Al-Qemzi, both with boat damage.
Sixteen racers lined up on the Yellow River for the rolling start in choppy water. Andersson held his advantage as Morin stayed clear of Wyatt. But the race was yellow-flagged straight away when Al-Fahim collided with Stark at turn two and Dillard spectacularly got lift, flipped at speed and crashed out of contention with the boat landing upright on the back straight. Team Abu Dhabi’s Thani Al-Qamzi then pulled out before the restart.
Just a dozen drivers resumed racing on lap nine after a yellow turn buoy had been secured by the rescue team. It hasn't been a good race for the UAE with all four Team Abu Dhabi and Victory Team boats out of the running.
Andersson maintained his lead from Morin but Seliö managed to squeeze through and snatch third from Wyatt. The Canadian also lost fourth place to Marszalek. Andersson continued to edge clear of his rivals as Wyatt came under pressure from birthday boy Zandbergen, who managed to pass the struggling World Championship leader soon afterwards.
The top six held their positions into lap 14 as Bourgeot climbed to the dizzy heights of seventh in the first of the two Maverick Racing boats with Strømøy, Benavente, Jelf, Roms and Deguisne running behind.
The dream run of form for Wyatt was not going to continue and the disappointed Canadian dropped out of contention on lap 14, stopped off the race course and his demise threw the title race wide open. Andersson duly headed into lap 18 with a lead of 6.532 seconds with Bourgeot climbing to sixth behind the Swede, Morin, Seliö, Marszalek and Zandbergen. Jelf moved ahead of his team-mate Benavente to snatch eighth.
By lap 26, Andersson’s lead had grown to 8.054sec and the Swede held on for the remaining six laps to win his first race of the season by 9.804 seconds. Morin held off Seliö to secure second with Marszalek, Zandbergen, Bourgeot, Strømøy, Jelf, Benavente, Roms and Deguisne rounding off the 11 finishers.
