222 Offshore takes the first win of the season after a thrilling battle on water, and in the rule book, which also propels Team GB to their first top 3 finish and Dubai Police from last on the grid to third on the podium.
The start is an exciting moment of an XCAT race, the one from today made no exception. The boats from the first gate behaved themselves, while on the second gate the tension of the start produced some tight battles which lead to Maritimo pulling back on the throttle, and as they say, what starts bad ends even worse, they had to be towed back to the pontoon before completing their first race lap due to a trim failure.
Moreover, allegedly, one boat hit and destroyed the Echo 2 and Foxtrot buoys resulting in a tighter turning curve on the right side of the racecourse, therefore the Race Control decided to cancel the X-Point circuit for the remainder of the race for safety reasons to prevent the crossing between the boats doing the short lap with the ones on the normal lap.
The communication was timely delivered to all the competitors, before any of them had the opportunity to take the short lap as regulated in the race instructions, which is after the mandatory first long lap. However, an internal miscommunication between only 4 boats and their respective team managers brought them a disqualification for missing the Echo turn by doing the short lap instead of the normal one.
So is fair to say that we had one race on the water and another one on the green table. But hey, this is XCAT, a complex sport, where the thrill of the race must be balanced by the rules meant to keep everybody safe to race another day.
Here are the official results of UIM XCAT World Championship – Fujairah GP – Race 1
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