Wednesday, May 14: Duarte Benavente is the undisputed veteran of the UIM F1H2O World Championship but he continues to push for success 26 years after making his race debut in the highest echelon of the sport. This season, he will continue to lay faith in his trusty Moore and will line up alongside young Briton Ben Jelf in his long-established F1 Atlantic Team.
After a career in F1H2O that has currently spanned 165 race starts, the Lisbon-born driver is still to beat the sixth-placed finish he earned in the 2000 Drivers’ Championship, although he came close on two occasions by finishing seventh in 2003 and 2014.
For the 55-year-old driver who started out dominating his local F4 Championship scene throughout the 1990s, the step up to F1H2O was a logical one. After winning the Iberian F4 series between 1995 and 1997, he was crowned European champion the following season and completed a hat-trick of successes with both the Iberian and Portuguese crowns.
Benavente made his debut in the UIM F1H2O World Championship at the 1999 Grand Prix of Portugal in Portimão. It was an inauspicious start for the then Waircom Mair Magnum DAC driver: he retired from the race before going on to finish out of the points in Cagliari and then record a first ever points-scoring finish with 10th at the Grand Prix of France in Chalon-sur-Saône. The Portuguese missed the rest of the F1H2O season, although he did win the Spanish F1 Multicopa Championship.
A switch to the Singha F1 Racing Team proved to be a master stroke for the up-and-coming Portuguese and he enjoyed his best ever season, the highlights being fourth-placed finishes in Portugal and France and a pair of fifth places in Poland and Sharjah. In 2001, he raced a Burgess for the Atlantic Team and finished 10th in the Drivers’ Championship but the season’s high point was becoming the F4 World Champion.
Duarte was now in the best form of his career and eighth and seventh places followed in the World Championship in 2002 and 2003 with a first ever podium coming in Germany in 2002 and another fourth place coming in Finland before a career-best second place at the 2003 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi behind Laith Pharaon.
Benavente persevered with the Burgess and claimed another podium finish in Cagliari in 2004 before switching to a Dragon boat. He claimed a first podium finish with the new hull at the 2009 Grand Prix of Portugal before switching to a Baba for 2012. The series was fought out over just five Grand Prix in 2014 and the Portuguese claimed a podium in Qatar on his way to seventh in the Drivers’ Championship.
He began using the Moore in 2015 and earned his last podium finish in Portugal in 2017. Since then, the Portuguese has struggled for form and has languished towards the rear of the standings. But he continues to persevere with the Moore and will, once again, line up alongside Jelf in the F1 Atlantic Team and be bidding to improve on his recent fortunes.
