This weekend World Championship powerboat racing returns to the River Saône in France after a fifteen years absence and without doubt the most successful international driver ever to race in this Burgundy region is really looking forward to bringing his new team to city of Macon.
Between 1993 and 2000 Guido Cappellini, the now Abu Dhabi Race Team Principal, was never off the podium when the UIM F1 World Championship visited the commune of Chalon-sur-Saône just forty minutes drive from Macon, in fact he took a unprecedented five French Grand Prix victories during those seven years.
“I have some great memories from my time racing in Chalon” said Cappellini. “It really helped that it wasn’t far for many of my Italian friends and family to come and watch the race” said the ten times World Champion. “Remember what the atmosphere was like, it was electric. Just before the race start they would fire a canon and the banks of spectators would all go silent. Then they would play that track from Jean-Michel Jarre just to add to that unique atmosphere, if Macon can create anything like that it will be an incredible race.”
For the first time in this year’s UIM F2 World Championship the race will take place on a river, which has its own distinctive characteristics. “Before we went to Lithuania we spent some time testing on a river similar to the one they will use in Macon” said Cappellini. “With my experience I can guide our drivers with how to set up their DAC hulls and what propellers they should try.”
So how is the training of the Abu Dhabi drivers coming along? “I think one of them is very close to getting a good result. The other driver needs more time to get to know the feeling of the boat. Ok, it doesn’t help when he crashes out but you remember me. When I first started they called me ‘Crashalini’. In the first part of my career I spent a lot of time in the water, in fact more time in the water than in my boat” he joked. “Eventually, over time I began to understand how it all worked, especially after my crash in Bristol. That’s when I changed my mentality and became ‘Winalini’.
He might have collected a record ten UIM F1 World Championship titles in his circuit racing career but it took the Italian ten years before he won the first one. So are those in charge at the Abu Dhabi International Marine Club prepared to allow Cappellini ten years to achieve their goal of a UAE World Champion driver?
“Please remember that a lot of those years were taken up with building DAC into a World Championship winning team” said Cappellini. “Abu Dhabi doesn’t want to spend ten years getting a driver into a position of winning a world title, that’s one of the reasons they got me involved, because I already had a proven infrastructure in place. I have a five year contract with the Abu Dhabi International Marine Club and it’s my goal to take an Arab driver through the F2 ranks and into a position where he can seriously challenge for a World Championship title and then progress into F1 and be a serious title contender in that series.”
So far this season Rashid Al Qamzi has been the team’s most consistent driver and currently sits just outside the top ten. “This year we have been coming to the F2 races to get experience of how it works both on and off the water” said Cappellini. “Next year we are coming to get good results and perhaps even challenge for a podium place. The club have asked me whether F2 is a ‘good’ package, I said No, it’s an incredibly good package, because I believe it’s one of the best categories in powerboat racing.”
Talk amongst those in the race pits is whether Abu Dhabi will ever host a round of the UIM F2 World Championship. “I would love to see them stage a round in the capital of the UAE” said Cappellini, “as to will it happen, that’s not my role in the team, my priority right now is to get one, hopefully two drivers good enough to reach the steps of the podium. This weekend we have Rashed Al-Tayer joining Al Qamzi in the two boat team.”
The action gets under way in Macon on Saturday with ‘Free Practice’ taking place from 10:30 till mid-day, followed by qualifying from 15:00. Cappellini will be hoping that his drivers can go some way to recreating the success that he one enjoyed in the city with a Mediterranean feel on the banks of the Saône.
