F1H2O Opens 2024 Season This Week In Indonesia With Historic 300th Race
Days before the 2024 Union Internationale Motonautique F1H2O World Championship season was set to kick off in Indonesia, the promoters of the series, which is going to be holding its 300th all-time race on Lake Toba in Sumatra, issued an extensive press release previewing the historic race and season.
Poland’s Bartek Marszalek earned his first career F1H2O Grand Prix victory during last year’s F1H2O World Championship race in Indonesia. Photos courtesy Simon Palfrader/F1H2O
I’s been less than three months since Team Sweden and Jonas Andersson claimed a clean sweep of all four major titles at the final round of the UIM F1H2O World Championship in Sharjah, but teams are all set for this week’s second Pertamina Grand Prix of Indonesia, which takes place March 1-3 on an immense volcanic lake occupying the caldera of a super volcano that was formed by a gigantic climate-changing eruption around 70,000 years ago.
Officials at H2O Racing and local promoter InJourney are expecting 17 boats from nine teams to line up for the opening round of the world championship that will visit the city of Qui Nhon in the Bình Định province of Vietnam for the first time at the end of March.
As teams prepare for the coming weekend, the triumphant Team Sweden is no more. Renamed Team Bình Định-Viet Nam for the 2024 world championship—following a support package announced during the close season—Andersson returns to defend his world titles with the support of the young rookie Stefan Arand of Estonia. Arand is making his debut in the series after finishing third overall in last year’s UIM F2 World Championship.
The Victory Team’s Erik Stark, who finished second in last year’s drivers’ championship, will be racing alone for the Dubai-based team in Indonesia as his teammate, Ahmad Al-Fahim, completes his suspension following a collision with Shaun Torrente in the second of the Sharjah sprint races. Stark, who has 12 podium finishes and four race wins, returned to the Victory Team at the start of last year after being absent from the series since the first race of 2021.
The F1H2O teams are eager to get back to racing on Lake Toba this weekend.
The China CTIC Team finished third in last year’s teams’ championship and Frenchman Peter Morin shadowed Andersson and Stark in the drivers’ championship. The team has announced an unchanged lineup for 2024 and American racer Brent Dillard will race alongside Morin for a second year. Dillard finished 10th in the points’ standings and earned a pair of sixth-place finishes in Indonesia and France in the second of the two Mercury-engine-powered Moore boats.
Team Abu Dhabi dominated the world championship in 2022 but suffered bad luck and a letdown year by its standards in 2023. The team running out of the Abu Dhabi Marine Sports Club managed to finish second in the teams’ championship and Thani Al-Qamzi was classified fifth in the drivers’ rankings. But the veteran missed one of the races and his former teammate—the American driver Torrente—was disqualified from one race and missed the last two rounds for very different reasons. Replacement driver Rashed Al-Qemzi managed to score points on the three races that he entered, but Team Abu Dhabi will be aiming to improve this season.
Following Torrente’s decision to stand down this year, Team Abu Dhabi opted to recruit the services of young Italian talent Alberto Comparato for 2024. He only finished in the points on two occasions last year but was competitive in qualifying and showed great pace at times for the Comparato F1 Team. He has already earned one podium finish and a pole position but the 26-year-old’s switch to Team Abu Dhabi means that the Comparato F1 Team will not be present in Indonesia.
Two-time world champion Sami Seliö will manage and drive for the Red Devil-SMC F1 Team this season with Dutchman Ferdinand Zandbergen as his teammate. The Finn will be trying to improve on a 2023 season running under the Sharjah Team banner where he and Zandbergen finished ninth and fourth in the drivers’ championship and fourth in the teams’ championship.
The Sharjah International Marine Sports Club confirmed in late January that four-time world champion Scott Gillman’s Mad Croc Gillman Racing had been taken over by the UAE emirate of Sharjah and would be rebranded as the Sharjah Team for the new season.
Filip Roms, 29, finished eighth in last year’s drivers’ championship and has two podium finishes to his name. He retains his place in the new lineup alongside Canadian Rusty Wyatt, who will be making his F1H2O racing debut on Lake Toba. The 28-year-old Ontario racer has been competing in the U.S. F1 championship and won the 2022 Lake Havasu Classic. He has shown pace and guile Stateside and team manager Gillman has a good track record of unearthing hidden talent.
Strømøy Racing, the F1 Atlantic Team and Maverick Racing retain unchanged driver lineups for the opening race on Lake Toba. Norway’s Marit Strømøy and Polish teammate Bartek Marszalek—the pole sitter and winner of last year’s inaugural race in Indonesia—will crew the two Strømøy DACs. Strømøy will continue the development of Mercury’s four-stroke V8 360 APX engine. Her best result with the new power unit was sixth overall at last December’s Road to Sharjah-Grand Prix of Sharjah.
Portuguese veteran Duarte Benavente teams up with England’s Ben Jelf in the two F1 Atlantic Team boats and the French duo of Cédric Deguisne and Alexandre Bourgeot represent Maverick Racing. Only Jelf (three) and Bourgeot (one) scored points last year and will be hoping to make rapid progress this season.
To lessen the risk of a strengthening afternoon wind hampering the timetable for race weekend, H2O Racing has arranged the on-water morning action on Lake Toba. Racing gets underway on Friday, March 1, with one hour of free practice followed by the three traditional qualifying sessions.
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