Friday, 5 September, IBIZA: The first outing of C1 and V1 running together saw the majority that took to the water using today’s two practice sessions to shakedown boats and familiarise themselves with the tandem-circuit, the recorded times of a secondary interest. At an earlier meeting before taking to the water the two sets of driver’s voted for a change to the planned race format which will now see the C1 catamarans taking the turns on the outside course marks, the V1 monohulls the inside. All drivers also called for more time on the water before getting into competitive running, resulting in the pole position being moved to Saturday morning ahead of race 1 in the afternoon.
It was a frustrating day for Relekta-Zabo-Isiklar’s Ugur Isik and Christian Zaborowski whose morning session ended prematurely with a gearbox breaking after just two laps and forcing them to miss the second session.
Luca Formill Fendi and Giovanni Carpitella in LFF10 was another outfit to suffer technical problems, being towed back in after recording the third best time of the session but failing to make it out in the afternoon, with Tarek Oktem and Miles Jennings in the second Fendi Racing boat LFF8-Polimersan running six laps on their first outing together, both agreeing more time on the water together is what they need.
The New Star Racing collaboration between Guido Cappellini and Andrey Kitashev, marking the debut of Russia into the Championship and a first start for throttleman Mikhail Kitashev alongside Cappellini in New Star-Poliform was more productive, enjoying two untroubled outings posting the second quickest time on the day.
Defending Champion Arif Al Zaffain and Nadir Bin Hendi marked their first outing together in C1 in two years with the quickest times in both sessions, the Victory pairing the only outfit to post a sub three minute time, 2:51.23s.
(Source: Class One)
Multiple World Champion Aaron Ciantar and Dominique Martini in Chaudron were the quickest of the V1 teams, their 3:03.21s in the afternoon the best of the day and the fourth overall fastest of both classes, with Karelpiu?s Giuseppe and Antonio Schiano going quickest in the morning session and posting the second best time [3:15.75s] on the day in the afternoon. Third fastest on the day were Maurizio Scepici and Stefano Bonanno in Tommy One, ahead of German duo Siegfried Greve and Udo Gross in Nassau.
Bernico-New Star’s Nico Bertels and Frank Hemelaer recorded the second best time of the morning session, the team also taking the opportunity to give reserve drivers Dmitry Vandyshev and Andrei Panyushkin a run out, England’s Drew Langdon and Ian Blacker using the afternoon session simply as a shakedown outing to test pressure settings.
