Battle for drivers’ title goes down to the wire at Sharjah showdown

Uder the patronage of Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Crown Prince, Deputy Ruler of Sharjah, and Chairman of the Sharjah Executive Council, the Sharjah World Championship Week begins Friday in the emirate’s picturesque Khalid Lagoon.

The finals of the world’s premier single-seater powerboat racing event will see 19 drivers competing for top spots to claim the “UIM F1H2O” World Championship title at the coveted Sharjah Grand Prix.

In a press conference held on Thursday, the event’s host, Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority (SCTDA) unveiled the exciting details of the Sharjah leg of the international championship.

The press conference was held in the presence of Khaled Jasim Al Midfa, Chairman of SCTDA; Humaid Khalfan Al Kindi, a Board Member of Sharjah International Marine Sports Club; Nicolo Di San Germano, UIM F1 H2O promoter; racers and media representatives.

The final round of the Sharjah Grand Prix, set to take place on Dec.7 - 8, will witness an exhilarating contest between elite world-class drivers.

Team Vietnam’s Jonas Andersson and Sharjah Team rival and rookie Rusty Wyatt have put some daylight between themselves and their nearest rivals in advance of a potential Sharjah showdown.

The pair are separated by just three points in the Drivers’ Championship with Team Vietnam heading the Sharjah Team by 10.5 points in the battle to win the Teams’ Championship.

With the successful introduction of a pair of Sprint races at the start of this season, the modified points’ system means that the China CTIC Team’s Peter Morin and the Victory Team’s Erik Stark could still pull off a shock and claim their first world titles.

Morin trails Andersson by 19.5 points with a potential 30 still at stake for victory in the Grand Prix and his Sprint race, while Stark is two points further behind.

Andersson dominated last season but competition has been far more intense this year. It looked as though newcomer Wyatt was going to run away with the championship before the last round on the Yellow River in Zhengzhou after his victories in Indonesia and Sardinia. Crucially, Andersson stormed to a start-to-finish win in Zhengzhou to snatch the World Championship lead and he also leads the F1H2O Pole Position Trophy by six points.

Wyatt won the weather-shortened Grand Prix of Shanghai-China on the Huangpu River but the Canadian only earned half points for the 11-lap race.

He braved the appalling weather conditions better than any of his rivals with choppy waters making the actual race more of a survival exercise.

His Finnish team-mate Filip Roms is 12th in the rankings, a topsy-turvy year not helped by DNFs in Indonesia and Vietnam and just three points from the other three Grand Prix.

The Sharjah Team will also debut a new boat designed in-house by Sharjah Marine this weekend.

Andersson’s Team Vietnam colleague Stefan Arand was unable to start the last race in Zhengzhou after a spectacular pre-race accident and the team announced in mid-November that the Estonian is still recovering from a neck muscle injury. His place alongside Andersson in Sharjah will be taken by Finn Kalle Viippo, whom he replaced at the start of the season. Arand will not be able, therefore, to improve on his current eighth position in the Drivers’ Championship.

The Sharjah race will also be the last in Victory Team colours for Stark, before he returns to Team Abu Dhabi at the start of 2025. After the second round of the World Championship – where the Swede had taken second place on Lake Toba and stormed to the win in Vietnam – it looked as though Stark would be the man to beat this year. That was before he retired in Sardinia, finished second in Shanghai and then retired in Zhengzhou.

The two October races in China were happy hunting grounds for Morin. He picked up points for sixth in Shanghai and was the runner-up to Andersson in Zhengzhou. Those two results have lifted Morin into distant title contention.