Saturday, October 11: The Victory Team’s Alec Weckström took full advantage of his pole position to earn a 2.430-second win in the second of the 18-lap Sprint races at the UIM F1H2O Grand Prix of Zhengzhou, China on Saturday afternoon.
The flying Finn held off the Sharjah Team’s Rusty Wyatt at the start and the Canadian was not able to catch him, despite closing the gap to less than one second in the closing stages of a pulsating race. The result marked the first ever Sprint race win for the Helsinki driver and consolidated his third position in the Drivers’ Championship behind Jonas Andersson and Wyatt.
Weckström said: “First of all we had some issues yesterday but the guys stayed late and fixed the problems. Rusty (Wyatt) was pushing. He is one hell of a racer. To come out on top is what you dream of. It’s going to be hard to beat Jonas (Andersson) off the dock tomorrow. He has to slip a little for us to get him in the first turn.”
The China CTIC Team’s Peter Morin gave the local crowd something to shout about with the final place on the podium. The Red Devil-SMC F1 Team’s Ferdinand Zandbergen had the measure of Team Abu Dhabi’s Erik Stark in the battle for fourth and the Comparato F1 Team’s Damon Cohen rounded off the top six.
Weckström had pole for the second of the 18-lap Sprint races from Arand, Wyatt, Peter Morin, Erik Stark, Strømøy Racing’s Bartek Marszalek, Damon Cohen, Ferdinand Zandbergen, the F1 Atlantic Team’s Duarte Benavente and Maverick Racing’s Alexandre Bourgeot.
Sharjah Team technicians were frantically trying to fix an engine issue on Arand’s boat in the build-up to the race but the Estonian was not able to start. It was a bitter blow to the youngster’s title challenge and moved Wyatt into second place on the start pontoon behind Weckström in calm conditions.
Weckström made a superb start to fend off Wyatt and Morin but it was a disastrous start for Marszalek who was stranded just off the pontoon with a fuel pump problem. Weckström extended his lead to 3.514 seconds but Cohen was almost airborne in his bid to overtake Stark. By lap five, Weckström continued to lead from Wyatt, Morin, Zandbergen, Stark, Cohen, Bourgeot and Benavente.
Wyatt began to apply the pressure on the leading Finn as Weckström caught the back-markers and began to lap Benavente. The gap was down to 2.389 seconds with eight laps remaining but the Victory Team driver kept a constant gap between the duo heading into the last five laps.
Wyatt closed the gap still further to 1.530 seconds into lap 15 and to 0.938 seconds into lap 16. As Weckström tried to avoid the dirty water from the back markers, Wyatt ran wide into cleaner water but the Finn shut the door with two laps to go and held on through the final nervy turns to win a thrilling race by just 2.430 seconds.
