Lionhead finishes first but remains over an hour behind Blue FPT
The seventh leg of the Round Britain Powerboat Race to Lowestoft today (Sunday) saw the Greek entered Blue FPT consolidate its elapsed time lead. Although finishing fourth overall, the Blue FPT crew, headed by Vassilis Pateras, will have a 73minute overall lead at the start of tomorrow’s final leg back to Portsmouth where the race started on June 21.
The earlier elapsed time leader, the Norwegian Lionhead driven by Pal Sollie, crossed the Lowestoft finishing line well ahead of the 39 boat fleet but a breakdown on Saturday’s leg to Newcastle is likely to have cost overall honours. Although this Diesel powered Rib is extremely fast, covering the 233 statute mile course at an average of 75.97mph, she is simply not fast enough to made a significant impact on the leader.
The Austrian entered Wettpunkt.com driven by Hannes Bohinc finished second breaking its domination of the event. It won the previous three legs but an electrical problem affecting navigation equipment forced the crew to slow costing them their fourth outright win.
“It was pretty hairy and meant that we had to ease off the throttles. These are busy waters and it was a case of reverting to traditional means and keeping our wits about us,” explained navigator Ed Williams-Hawkes.
However it is of little consequence as its failure to complete the opening leg between Portsmouth and Plymouth puts Wettpunkt.com well down the finishing order, over six hours behind Blue FPT.
The Sunseeker XS, Going Lead driven by Neil Holmes and Dean Gibbs, achieved its best result of the event so far with a third place. Although 18 minutes behind the leader Going Lean was three minutes ahead of Blue FPT at the finish.
