Saturday, October 11: Defending three-time World Champion Jonas Andersson held off Victory Team rival Shaun Torrente from the start and then stormed to an emphatic 12.974-second victory in the first of the Sprint races at the UIM F1H2O Grand Prix of Zhengzhou, China on Saturday afternoon.
Andersson’s team-mate Grant Trask rounded off the podium finishers with the Red Devil-SMC F1 Team Sami Seliö snatching fourth when Ben Jelf of the F1 Atlantic Team pulled out after 12 laps. Marit Strømøy guided her four-stroke Apex V8-engined boat to a much-needed fifth place.
Andersson said: “We were playing with the boats yesterday and I didn’t have the perfect set-up for qualifying but we tried something else for the race. It is still tricky to drive. The boys will work this evening on that. We used the other boat last weekend and we used the boat I built today.”
Runner-up Torrente said: “We were kind of sizing up Jonas for tomorrow. We had a really good start and we pushed for the first couple of laps and then it was over. The water was beautiful out there. I had to try to get him on the start. I had a chance but it wasn’t enough.”
Andersson lined up on pole ahead of Torrente, team-mate Trask, Jelf, Alberto Comparato, Seliö, Kyle Maskall, Strømøy, Team Abu Dhabi’s Mansoor Al-Mansoori and Maverick Racing’s Cédric Deguisne for the first of the 18-lap Sprint races on the 1.986km circuit on the Yellow River.
Andersson and Torrente made strong starts but the Swede held his line and maintained the lead with Strømøy climbing to seventh at the expense of Maskall, who also slipped behind Al-Mansoori into ninth. Andersson began to pull away from the field and the gap to Torrente was 5.834 seconds through lap two and up to 7.366sec after four laps.
The entire field held their positions through one-third distance with Trask continuing the superb start to his Team Sweden career in third place ahead of Jelf and Comparato. Torrente settled into a safe pace to conserve his second place and the American shadowed Andersson to the chequered flag to pick up nine points for finishing second.
Trask claimed third from Seliö, while Strømøy, Comparato, Al-Mansoori, Maskall and Deguisne rounded off the nine finishers in what developed into a processional opening Sprint race, despite Comparato slipping from fifth to sixth in the closing stages and Jelf pulling off the course with a technical problem after lap 12.
