Team Abu Dhabi faces a race against time to get ready for the opening round of the UIM Class 1 World Powerboat Championship, which is being held in conjunction with the Salerno leg of the eighth edition of the Venice-Monte Carlo endurance race which started with an 81nautical mile, section from Venice to Rimini on July 1st.

According to team manager, Randy Scism, the ship carrying the team's vital equipment was due to arrive at the Italian port of Genoa yesterday and team personnel hoped to have everything cleared from the port and en route to Salerno by Monday morning.

Class 1 entrants will tackle two races on their own closed course to coincide with the rest day and the seventh of the 10 stages of the endurance event between Salerno and Formia. That 82 nm section runs up the south-western Italian coast on Thursday, July 9th, and follows sections of the race via Pescara, Brindisi, Pisticci and Reggio Calabria. Class 1 entrants will have their own course for practice, pole position sessions and the two races. Salerno is a city and commune in Campania in southwest Italy and is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The 1,441 nm route of Venice-Monte Carlo then heads north from Formia and on to Cibitavecchia, Viareggio and across the coast to a finish in Monte Carlo.

Team Abu Dhabi's MTi (Marine Technologies Inc.) hull was built at Wentzville in the United States by former Class One racer, Randy Scism and his team, although the crew of the race boats will be finalised when the equipment is in Salerno and the team have arrived on site.

Team Abu Dhabi's MTi catamaran is powered by Lamborghini SCAM engines, although the plan is to run two boats on Class 1 races, including subsequent rounds in Terracina and Abu Dhabi. The second boat will be powered by Mercury 850 engines. Faleh Al Mansoori, Majid Al Mansoori and Rashed Al Tayer are available in a strong team line-up that also includes John Tomlinson and Gary Ballough.

Tomlinson and Ballough rounded off their 2014 UIM Class One World Powerboat Championship season by finishing an excellent second overall in the second race at the Grand Prix of the UAE in Abu Dhabi and the Team Abu Dhabi duo are relishing the challenge of competing against Dubai's Victory Team this season.

They achieved three podium finishes in 2014 and Team Abu Dhabi duly finished fourth in last year's UIM Class 1 World Powerboat Championship, behind the Victory Team, Relekta-Zabo-Isiklar and LFF10.

Team Abu Dhabi is supported by Etihad Airways as the official carrier and sponsor and runs under the patronage of His Highness Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, advisor to the UAE President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Abu Dhabi International Marine Sports Club, ADIMSC.

The timetable of events in Salerno gets underway with administration, fuelling and scrutineering on Tuesday July 7th. Teams will then be permitted on to the Mediterranean for an hour of practice from 10:00hrs on Wednesday and the pole position session will take centre stage from 11:30hrs. Race one gets underway at 15:00hrs.

A second pole position session follows on Thursday morning from 11:00hrs and the second of the two Salerno races will be staged from 14:00hrs.
Source: WAM