ciao
11-29-2007, 10:27 AM
Strong winds and rough seas greeted the teams as they took to the waters of the Arabian Gulf off the Mina Seyahi for today’s first official practice for Saturday’s Mina Seyahi Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the 2007 WPPA Class 1 World Powerboat Championship. Today’s session gave teams their first opportunity to run the new 4.4Nm course with the early pace set by Qatar 96, 3m 5.48s, Spirit of Norway, 3m 9.92secs, with Victory 7, posting 3m 14.73s before race officials called a 10-minute halt to proceedings to move two buoy positions in the section of the course running inside Palm Island. When the course reopened the lap times came down, with Qatar 95’s Abdullah Al-Sulaiti and Luca Nicolini knocking five seconds off their previous time, posting the fastest time of the session with 3m 5.06s to upstage their team-mates who decided not to go again and settled for just one lap. Spirit of Norway went again and improved their time, going third quickest with 3m 6.06s. Negotiator knocked 12 seconds of their time to record fourth fastest ahead of Victory 7, with Spirit of Norway 20 completing the top six.