As the build up to the Qatar Grand Prix gathers pace, Qatar and Dubai's Victory Team used their free time on Friday to carry out further development tests on their new Mercury HP1075 SCi engines.
As the build up to the Qatar Grand Prix gathers pace, Qatar and Dubai’s Victory Team used their free time on Friday to carry out further development tests on their new Mercury HP1075 SCi engines. Victory 7’s throttleman, Jean Marc Sanchez and crew chief Marco Bonomo were also testing the team’s spare boat, Victory 4 and Italians Matteo Nicolini and Lino di Biase were seen putting Qatar 95 through its paces.
“Matteo was out on the water carrying out some early tests with Qatar 95 and the new engines,” commented Qatar Team Principal and driver, Sheikh Hassan. “We did not have time to test in Italy, so the team needed to iron out a minor overheating problem. The engines are running a little too hot and we need to sort out a small electronics fault before race day. It is probably something simple, but better to have the problem now than on Monday”.
Although Victory 4 will not compete in the remaining races this year with Mercury engines, Sanchez and Bonomo have used the time available to gather crucial data. “This has been a good opportunity for us to get a feel for the engine and to see what it can do and first impressions seems very good.” said Bonomo, adding. “We need to find out the proper way to tune and adjust them to race and course conditions because there are different needs, top speed and acceleration.
“These engines can easily power a boat to between 160-165mph – we’ve seen that. What we are doing now is sorting out the little issues and requirements you have in a race boat that you don’t find pleasure boating. We are looking for the top performance we know you can get with this package and then we can tune it for the right compromise for race conditions”.
