Weekend success for British P1 offshore powerboat team in Spain
The Pignolo 53 team secured their first Powerboat P1 win in the Evolution class after a chaotic and incident packed Endurance race that brought the weekend’s first Vigo Grand Prix of the Sea to a dramatic close. Delighted with his team’s performance, Pignolo throttleman Max Ferrari said:
“Today was a very important win for us – we were keen to finish off the season well and so were careful not to make any mistakes. We saw some boats missing a buoy marker and knew they would pick up penalties, so decided not to push. Instead we keep a steady speed.”
The budding double champion Fountain Worldwidecrew led the early stages ahead of their main title rivals, Kiton Outerlimits, until a fuel problem dropped them down the order and then retirement on the 11th lap. This gave Kiton Outerlimits the lead until they too started struggling with a variety of mechanical problems and dropped back, making the Fantastic 1 Cigarette Racing Team Europe the new race leaders.
Problems occured when Fantastic 1 missed one of the key buoy markers. This was repeated by GFN Gibellato, Kiton Outerlimits and Centaurian Yachts. On the next lap, Fantastic 1 and GFN Gibellato missed the mark for a second time.
Each team picked up a four minute penalty for each infringement, meaning that the Pignolo 53 crew emerged as the ultimate first-time victors of the race, following the lead of fellow Evolution debutant winners Honeyparty.com in Saturday’s Sprint race. The Lucas Oil team secured their best finish of the year with second place, while Richard Carr aboard Honeyparty.com followed up his first ever P1 win with a third placing.
This result gave the British entered Honeyparty.com overall victory in the Vigo Grand Prix of the Sea on aggregate, ahead of Pignolo 53 and Centaurian Yachts.
