News from Class 1 World Powerboat Championship

by Class 1 World Powerboat Championship media on 8 Feb 2008
Domenico Cirilli has confirmed he will unveil a new, all-Spanish team for 2008 and announced that Sergio Mora Carrasco will make his Class 1 debut as his driver.

Details of the team will be released over the coming weeks, but it is likely that Cirilli will run the Victory hull that he raced in 2007 with Scam V12 powerplants.

Cirilli is one of the sports most charismatic and experienced racers; he started racing in 1987, winning the Italian Class 3 Championship in 1988 and finishing runner-up in the European and World Championships a year later. He made his Class 1 debut in 1990 and over the next four years competed in over 40 races, winning the Class 1 World Championship for diesel powered boats in Paul & Shark in 1992.

In 1998 and 1999 he entered the Nice-Cannes-Monte Carlo Raid and in 2001 returned to race in Class 3, 4litre, winning the Italian, European and World Championship a year later. He finished runner-up in the Endurance Championship in 2003 and returned to Class 1 action in Alicante in 2004, finishing fifth overall in the championship and sixth in 2005. In 2006 he won pole position and finished second in the Spanish Grand Prix in Garrucha and took third in the Slovenian Grand Prix.

Negotiator will be the only outfit to line-up in Doha with an unchanged set-up, with team owner-throttleman, Chris Parsonage, confirming he will race alongside 2005 World Champion, Bard Eker, and the Sterling supercharged V8s powering Negotiator.

“Our crew is currently out in Dubai getting the boat ready so we can test immediately we arrive in Doha,” said Parsonage. “We are making one or two modifications to the front end and there is some work to be carried out to repair the damage we sustained in the 140mph spin out in the last race in Dubai.”

The team's development of the Sterling engines paid dividends towards the latter stages of 2007, grabbing two podium finishes in Qatar and Dubai, with the team ending the season sixth overall in the title race and fourth in the Middle East Championship, and Parsonage is confident that the team can build on their double podium success and mount a serious title challenge this season.

Norwegian, Kolbjorn Selmer, is confirmed as the new driver in Foresti & Suardi alongside team owner-throttleman, Giampaolo Montavoci.

Kolbjorn made his first Class 1 appearance in Oslo in 2007, testing with Montavoci, before moving into the driver’s seat for his Class 1 race debut alongside Domenico Cirilli at the Romanian Grand Prix in the team’s number two boat, VM Foresti & Suardi. He partnered Montavoci in the Egyptian Grand Prix - finishing a credible fifth - and Qatar Grand Prix in the number two boat, with Montavoci’s boat sidelined after a crash in qualifying in Egypt.

His powerboat experience includes stints in Poker runs, the Norwegian National ProVee Championship and the V1 Class. Kolbjorn is a keen skier and Motocross rider, the founder of the Trondheim Powerboat Club and was the Technical Organiser of the two, Class 1 Grands Prix in Trondheim in 2005.

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