High Winds And Ombaks On Lake Toba, Race 2 World Championships F1 Powerboats Fired

President Joko Widodo handed over the trophy to the winner of the F1 Powerboat race on Lake Toba, North Sumatra, Sunday (26/2/2023). (Between/Agus Suparto-Biro Press of the Presidential Secretariat)

JAKARTA - The first round of the F1 Powerboat World Championship (F1H2O), which is scheduled to take place in two races, finally only one competition will take place because of strong winds and high waves in the waters of Lake Toba, Muliaja Napitupulu Harbor, Bige, North Sumatra, Sunday.

The second race is scheduled to start at 15:00 WIB. Then it was delayed by about 15 minutes. It appears that the officers at the competition arena are clean and pull the track divider which makes the track shorter.

Then the riders also had time to start racing three laps. Shortly after that, the riders one by one began to lower their speed and withdraw from their race given the high waves.

The driver who tried to maneuver looks crushed. Until finally Race Director Luis Miguel Ribero was forced to cancel and assume the second race was not there for the safety of the participants.

"The event has been completed and successfully succeeded. We have completed the qualification and race at home, but indeed we want to give more to the people of Toba with an additional race. However, the weather was not possible, until we finally canceled the additional race," said InJourney Director Donypertia in Balige as quoted by Antara, Sunday.

The day before, the qualifying round, which was also scheduled to take place at 15:00, had to be delayed to this morning at 08:00 a.m. due to wind conditions and high waves.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) previously predicted that the weather conditions in Lake Toba today were the same as yesterday. It even has higher potential.

With this result, the first round of F1H2O 2023 will only take place in one race which will take place at home. In other words, Lake Toba did not make history as the location for the two races in one round of the F1 Powerboat.

The winner in the first race was Bartek Marszalek from Stromoy Racing who finished ahead in the 30-minute race.

The second position belongs to Sami Setio from the Sharjah Team which is 01.97 seconds adrift of the winner. Then the third position is Erik Stark from Victory who is 03.26 seconds adrift. Both drivers got 15 and 12 points, respectively.

Peter Morin from China CTIC Team is in fourth place with a difference of 04.18 seconds and below it is the Abu Dhabi Team Thani Al Qemzi driver who is 05.87 seconds adrift.

Bad luck was experienced by defending champion Shaun Torrente from the Abu Dhabi Team. He had to settle for being thrown into position 9 with a difference of 1 lap from the winner of the race.

Torrente, who was in pole position, was awarded a 1 lap penalty for stealing a start.

This condition was Torrente's second mistake. Previously in the qualifying session, he had received the pole position first.

But he considered cutting the track until his fastest time record was canceled and he finally started the start in second behind Marszalek.