ABU DHABI: Victory 3’s Arif Saif Al Zafeen and Mohammed Al Marri celebrated their World, European, Pole Position and Middle East Championship titles with a start-to-finish victory in race two at Friday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final round of the 2012 UIM Class 1 World Powerboat Championship, held off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

The Italian crew of Luca Formilli-Fendi and Gianpaolo Carpitella started the race from second and finished in the same position in Fendi Racing and Turkey’s Ugur Usik and Norwegian Christian Zaborowski were third in Zabo-Isiklar.

Team Abu Dhabi’s Rashed Al Tayer and throttleman Majed Al Mansoori concluded their campaign with fourth position.

Victory 3 set the fastest time in Friday morning’s free practice session with a stunning 2min 19.07sec lap on their fourth tour of the course. Seven of the eight boats took to the water and Team Abu Dhabi ran for three laps and posted the second quickest lap of 2min 24.05sec.

Teams again had to tackle the two nautical mile start straight outside Lulu island before heading back to the in-shore section of the course for the 14-lap duration of the 49.97Nm race. The Victory Team, fresh from winning a 12th world title and a sixth Middle East title, led the way from Fendi Racing and Victory Team of Australia with Team Abu Dhabi lining up at the front of the second gate.

Victory 3 stormed into a six-second lead from Victory Team of Australia, Fendi Racing and Team Abu Dhabi in fourth and then opted, along with Fendi Racing and Spirit of Gabon-Poliform, to take the first of their two short laps on lap two. Zafeen and Marri stormed further in front of Fendi Racing and opted for another short lap on lap three, as Fendi Racing followed them around the short course.