Dubai’s Victory Team was, without question, the team of the year; Victory 1’s Mohammed Al Marri and Nadir Bin Hendi led them to a 64th Grand Prix win, their eighth World Championship, a sixth Middle East title and their sixth Pole Position Championship in sixteen years.
But whilst the statistics give Victory the deserved accolades; 2008 saw Jotun emerge as the leading European challenger who took on and beat the might of the Middle East to lift the European Championship. The V8 broke the V12 engine dominance, powering Jotun and Qatar 95 to race wins, three new pilots entered the Championship and two new boat designs by Nicolini Offshore and Maritimo, took their first tentative racing steps into arguably the most competitive international powerboat series in the world.
But the season belonged to Victory 1; Al Marri stepped in to replace the injured Arif Al Zafeen after a winning start to their title defence in Qatar, and alongside Bin Hendi produced an imperious season-long display to take a further four wins in Montenegro, Russia, Egypt and Dubai to complete the title treble and end the year as World, Middle East and Edox Pole Position Champions – a second World title for Al Marri and a first for the tenacious Bin Hendi.
Victory’s strength in depth was highlighted by the performance of team-mates, Abdullah Al Mehairbi and outgoing Champion, Jean-Marc Sanchez in Victory 7, who guided his ‘rookie’ driver to the runners-up slot in both the World and Middle East Championships, taking an impressive seven podium finishes from eight starts.
Qatar’s season hit trouble on day one of competitive action, with Sheikh Hassan and Steve Curtis destroying their number 1 raceboat in qualifying. Despite jumping into their spare boat to finish second in the season opener, they would ultimately be on the back foot all season and record just three podium finishes. Reliability, or rather lack of, proved their Achilles heel and the Qatar 96 crew saw race-winning positions and podium performances end ignominiously on more than one occasion.
But Qatari pride was restored in the last race of the season with a sensational win by Abdullah Al-Sulaiti and Matteo Nicolini over their Dubai rivals, and with three previous podiums, Qatar 95 ended the season third overall and put one over their team-mates to finish as the number one boat in the Qatar camp.
By the mid-season point, the Championship needed a team to remind Victory that there were other boats out there, and it was the marauding Norwegians in the scarlet, Class 1 Mercury V8-powered Jotun that delivered. Inge Brigt Aarbakke and Jorn Tandberg, after just one outing together in Moscow, produced a simply stellar performance on their home waters of Arendal in the BMW Norwegian Grand Prix to pass both Victory outfits and take a sensational win. A race later in Romania, they seized on Victory 1’s misfortune to romp home and take a second win and lift the European Championship by one point, ending the year as the top European challenger in fifth place overall and third in the Edox Pole Position Championship.
Foresti & Suardi ended the year with the team’s highest points tally in Class 1, with Montavoci and Selmer proving to be one of the most consistent teams in the Championship, always in the points and never finishing outside the top six, producing their best result of the season, fourth, in rough seas in the Egyptian Grand Prix in Porto Marina to end their year as top European outfit in the Middle East Championship and sixth in the overall Championship standings.
For Giorgioffshore, 2008 produced a landmark moment for the team. In a season of development, running a new Michael Peters-designed, Victory-built raceboat and trying various engine packages along the way, it all came together for Nicola Giorgi and Giorgio Manuzzi in the Mina Seyahi Grand Prix, taking the team’s first Class 1 podium with a well-deserved third place.
For Duemme Offshore Team boss, Domenico Cirilli, 2008 was a season to focus on team development and to introduce new Spanish pilots into Class 1. He started the year in Montenegro alongside debutant, Sergio Mora Carrasco, taking points in their next three outings before a planned switch for the all-Spanish pairing to a new raceboat later in the season.
In Egypt it was the turn for a second Spanish newcomer to make his debut. Mohammed Abdelkader Ahmed survived a baptism of fire to beat the rough seas alongside Ahmed Al Suwaidi to bring the boat home in seventh place, and in the final race of the year was joined by another Class 1 debutant, Christian Rivolta, and added to his tally of points.
With Cirilli unable to make the final three races of the season, for the first outing in the team’s new Class 1 Mercury, V8-powered Tencara in Egypt, Carrasco was joined by the flamboyant and experienced Italian throttleman, Giovanni Carpitella, to see out the season.
Technical problems thwarted this scratch pairing for the first couple of races, but after modifications introduced by Carpitella to the set-up, the performance levels improved in the final race weekend of the season. Three top-six times in practice were followed by an impressive fifth- fastest in qualifying, with Carrasco and Carpitella producing an outstanding showing in the last race of the year, taking fourth place, the team’s highest position of the year.
A disrupted season is the best way to describe 2008 for Chris Parsonage Racing. What looked like being a great season opener – running comfortably in third and with a podium finish in their sights – went wrong with just three laps to go when Bard Eker and Chris Parsonage crashed out.
Parsonage elected to sit out the European rounds, but returned to race in Egypt and Dubai. With Eker, the 2005 World Champion, unavailable, Parsonage switched to take the wheel and brought in American throttle ace, Billy Moore to take the sticks. The Anglo-American pairing gelled immediately to mark an impressive return for Parsonage and Class 1 debut for Moore, finishing third, but they were unable to repeat this performance in Dubai, failing to start the penultimate race and finishing sixth in the final race.
There was also a cameo role this year for the much-talked about new Class 1 raceboat, built by Italian boat builder, Nicolini Offshore - the NO C1CAT. The first new design in Class 1 for five years was unveiled at the Russian Grand Prix in the colours of the Qatar Team and given the immediate ‘thumbs-up’ by the man behind the project, Matteo Nicolini. And two race outings with Mohammed Al Nassr and Luca Nicolini in the cockpit – Russia and Norway – gave a clear indication of the boat's potential and pace, with consistent top-six times in practice and in qualifying.
The second new design of the season appeared in Dubai. Given ‘wild card’ entry status by officials for the races in Norway and Dubai, Class 1’s youngest partnership, Tom Barry-Cotter and Pal Virik Nilsen returned to Class 1 action as the 2007/8 Australian Offshore Superboat Champions.
In Norway the Australian-Norwegian pairing jumped back into their ‘old’ Class 1 Mercury, V8-powered Tencara to finish sixth, and in Dubai unveiled their new Class 1 specification raceboat, designed and built by Australia’s premiere manufacturer of long-range luxury motoryachts, Maritimo.
Despite the obvious ‘teething troubles’ of testing and developing a new raceboat under race conditions and getting acclimatised to its handling characteristics, the Maritimo crew produced a very creditble performance to take fifth place in the Mina Seyahi Grand Prix, but lost out in the last Grand Prix of the year after a big impact spin-out ended their race on lap 14 of 20.
Victory end the year as the Champions and remain the team to beat in 2009. But behind their success is a group of often unsung heroes who give the pilots the hardware to do the job - the mechanics and technicians - and Nadir Bin Hendi was quick to recognize this. "The whole team have done a fantastic job all year. They gave us not one great boat but two and we did the rest." So hats of to Crew Chiefs, Marco Bonomo and Luciano Barbati and all the crew behind the Champions.