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Comparato Completes his Championship Challenge

“It was a perfect weekend” commented Alberto Comparato, “I don’t think I could have done anything else to improve it.” As the young Italian driver stepped onto the top step of the podium to celebrate his two race wins and collect the UIM gold medal for winning the World F4S Championship, it was hard to tell who had the biggest smile on their face, Alberto or Fabio Comparato.  “More fast than Padre” said a delighted father as he watched his son receive his awards from the UIM Commissioner Pelle Larsson and Powerboat GP’s Jason Brewer.    

Comparato senior, the former UIM F2 World Champion, was quick to praise his son and confirmed that the future looks very bright for him. “He will spend another season racing in the F4S series, racing his Italian built BaBa hull, before he makes the transition to the F2 World Championship. “His mother will be very happy when she hears about his success, it will make up for all the weekends away both testing and racing the boat.”  

 Taking the first of the three European Championship titles that were being fought for over the weekend, at the National Watersports Centre, was the Estonian driver Rasmus Haugasmagi.  

Three heat wins in the OSY400 class gave him a maximum score of 1200 points. “I came here to be on the podium” he said. “In my home club we train on a two pin course set up on a narrow river nearby, it gave me the perfect set up to race here as I have had lots of practised at tight turns; this certainly gave me an advantage over some of the other foreign drivers. In four years I have never had to change my race set up so when I have arrived at a course giving me a huge advantage.”  

In the GT30 category Britain’s Ben Jelf thought he had blown his chances of taking his fourth European Championship title when he fluffed his start in the third heat. He eventually got going but his fourth place finish made his task even harder in the face of the stiff European opposition.    

As the start lights went out in the final heat the reigning World Champion, Sara Pakalen, shot off into the lead and took her first heat victory of the weekend. Following her home was the Polish driver Marcin Szymczyk and it looked like he had done enough to take the title after scoring one win and two second places. A quick check on the scores soon revealed that by finishing in third place Jelf had just done enough to take the title; his winning point’s margin was just twenty five.  

“This really makes up for the disappointment I felt at the World Championships a few months ago” said Jelf. “I hadn’t done the maths before I started the last heat and I thought I needed second place, in the end when people started telling me that I had won it came as a huge relief. This weekend was all about putting to bed my international racing career in GT15. It’s time to concentrate on GT30 and my thoughts now turn to Stewartby where I need a second place to secure my British GT30 national title in a couple of weeks’ time.”  

Another driver whose GT15 racing career had come to an end was Gregor Eevardi from Estonia.    

The reigning World Champion added the European title to his list of racing achievements when he took two heat victories to add to his second place in the opening heat. The sixteen year old was racing for the first time in the UK and initially was struggling for speed until the team discovered a problem with his throttle pedal.

“Once we had fixed the problem everything went smoothly” said Eevardi. “It’s been a great year for me winning both titles. The Worlds were really hard to win, as there were so many competitors but with the top five quickest European drivers here this event was actually tougher to win.”  

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Article courtesy of Chris Davies, Powerboat GP