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The Maverick F1 driver was third to go in
the Q3 top six shoot-out and produced the
best time of the session on the first of his
two runs, securing the pole with a 37.71s
lap around the 1.72km circuit. “It was a
crazy lap and it felt like the boat was half a
metre out of the water all the time. It was
very tough but a cool lap.” said Stark after
taking his third career pole position. “You
just don’t know what can happen in these
conditions when you are at the maximum
and the boat is flying.”
CTIC F1 Shenzhen China’ s Philippe Chiappe
followed Stark out but his best time of
37.89s was short by 0.18seconds, with
Victory Team’s Alex Carella third quickest
with a 38.15s lap.
It was a spectacular 90 minutes of racing
with shocks and surprises in all three
sessions, Marit Stromoy and Thani Al Qemzi
the first to come up short in Q1 and failing
to make the 12 boat cut to progress into
Q2.
More shocks followed in Q2 with
championship leader and the pole-sitter
at the season-opener in Portugal down in
eighth place and missing going through
into the shootout, with Peter Morin making
it into Q3 for just the second time and
producing his best ever result going fourth
quickest.
Erik Edin produced a sensational set of
qualifying sessions, topping the time sheets
in Q1, going fourth quickest in Q2 and into
the shootout for the first time in his first
full season in the championship and then
posting the fifth quickest time.
Controversy followed at the end of Q2
when Ahmed Al Hameli was docked his best
lap for impeding another driver, dropping
him out of the top six to ninth and elevating
Bartek Marszalek who went on to qualify in
sixth.
Francesco Cantando narrowly missed out
on a Q3 slot bringing his Blaze Performance
hull home in seventh with Duarte Benavente
in tenth.
In the Grand Prix Erik Stark delivered the
ultimate performance to take a sensational
victory and his second career win, putting
himself right back in the fight for the title.
It was a pulsating race from start-to-finish
with Maverick F1 Racing’s Stark surviving
two prolonged yellow flag periods and
restarts, the first when championship
leader Shaun Torrente speared and
destroyed two turn buoys resulting in
automatic disqualification and forcing him
out of the race on lap 11, the second when
defending world champion Alex Carella
barrel rolled out of the race on lap 36 of 54.
F1H2O
n° 3 SEPTEMBER | 2018
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