Thursday, November 27: Shaun Torrente topped the times with a lap of 42.453 seconds in the first of two practice sessions for the Grand Prix of Jeddah at the North Obhur Waterfront on Thursday afternoon.
The UIM F1H2O World Championship is visiting the iconic Red Sea city in Saudi Arabia for the first time and 20 drivers will be battling it out for supremacy in Saturday afternoon’s Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the championship. Free practice was delayed because of a local power issue and the day’s timetable was reduced from three to two sessions as a result.
Strømøy Racing’s Marit Strømøy was the first racer on to the water with the four-stroke V8-powered DAC but it was less than three minutes into the stint before defending champion Jonas Andersson clocked the fastest lap of 42.886 seconds. That lap stood firm through the first 10 minutes of the one-hour session with half the field still to hit the water in the heat of a Jeddah afternoon.
Andersson continued to lead the way through a brief yellow flag stoppage with Strømøy (42.996sec) the only other driver to break the sub-43-second barrier after 20 minutes. Six racers still hadn’t taken to the race course.
The Victory Team’s Shaun Torrente surpassed Andersson’s time on his eighth lap with a run of 42.453sec but Grant Trask, rookie Stefan Hagin and Alberto Comparato had not started their stints by the halfway point of the session.
Trask took to the course heading into the remaining 22 minutes but Torrente’s time stood firm at the top of the rankings with Andersson, Strømøy, the Red Devil-SMC Team’s Ferdinand Zandbergen and the China CTIC Team’s Peter Morin in close attendance. Andersson ran a quicker lap of 42.494sec on his 26th tour of the circuit but that was still fractions of a second short of Torrente’s target heading into the remaining 10 minutes of the stint.
Hagin and Comparato sat out the stint but Torrente took the confidence boost from the quickest lap, followed by Andersson, Strømøy, Zandbergen, Team Abu Dhabi’s Erik Stark, Morin and the F1 Atlantic Team’s Ben Jelf.
