Pierre Colpin looking back at Malta and ahead to Sardinia
We had the chance again to talk to Pierre Colpin, driver of the 2B1 Team, title contender in the Evolution Class of UIM´s Grand Prix of the Sea series. After a troubled start for the series, things are looking up and with Sardinia being the 3rd event of the series it looks like it will be a full blown world championship. Pierre talks with us on how the 2nd race in Malta went and looks ahead to the next race in Sardinia. With the boat rescued in the nick of time from catching fire in Malta, there are a lot of things to discuss.
Pierre starts out by telling us he was very pleased with the way the boat was set up and handled from the get go. 2B1 Furnibo took second place with 36/100 of a second to spare with the pole sitters SNAV KITON. According to Pierre not getting first in PowerPole had a lot to do with the team catching a freak wave in Valetta harbor. So with the speed there, everybody in the team had reasons for high hopes for Saturday’s Sprint Race.
The team had a good start on Saturday. They had some trouble negotiating a very tight left turn on the circuit but once the team got into the rhythm they were able to fight of challenges to their top spot and held it till the end for maximum points in the sprint race. The Sprint result also gave the team an excellent position for doing well in Sunday’s endurance race. This left the team at the Championship overall top spot after Saturday´s racing.
The start on Sunday went a little different than expected. SNAV KITON and MetaMarine went out ahead of the pack leaving 2B1 to be the third team to pass the first buoy. 2B1 had no other choice but to follow the leaders. Settling into a rhythm, the team started to gain momentum and at one point in the race was gaining on both teams in front of them. After a spin out of SNAV KITON, 2B1 was second. That is when disaster struck for the team. One engine started to overheat and the team had to throttle down. In the end they had to finish the race in 4th place but with no points rewarded to them.
Back in port Frank Hemelaer and Pierre Colpin discovered that they had been very lucky that the boat had not caught fire. A hose transporting water between the water pick-up and the engine had come loose and that caused the engine to overheat. The mounts for the hose had corroded and almost no cooling water was fed to the engine. The overheating turned out to have been so severe that the wiring was down to the naked copper. Because of this problem also the second engine started overheating. So all in all the team was lucky to escape the incident with no more damage than the endurance race points lost and 2 engines to rebuild. As severe as that sounds (and is) the team could have lost the boat if it had caught fire because of the overheating problems.
For the rest of the crew this meant a lot of hard work had to be done. Instead of leaving the boat in Italy for the next race in Sardinia, it now had to be shipped back to Belgium and both engines had to be taken apart and rebuilt. Thursday July 1st all work should be done, including the spare engine and the team should be ready to participate in Sardinia 9 – 11 July. Pierre is already looking forward to that.
Sardinia is as said the third racing weekend for the 2010 UIM Grand Prix of the Sea series and 2 more events are planned for the first weekend of September and for half of September. Exact venues sites have to be announced. If the race calendar works out in this way, this means that the series can announce a World Champion at the end of the season as 5 races is the minimum number of races for a World Championship. Quite a feat for an organization that only took over at the start of April.
Regarding the future, Pierre hopes that some solid agreements can be made for the next seasons to come. Having some security for the future would make things easier for the teams and to get sponsorship and would increase the chance of other teams entering the series. Pierre has high hopes that the current organizers, the UIM and Powerboat P1 Management Ltd., the former promoters of the series under the name PowerboatP1, can reach an agreement that will ensure the racing series for a long time to come.
Not only from his own racing experience but also from looking at the current numero uno on the leader board, MetaMarine Corse, Pierre explains that you need time as a team to evolve and get to your best racing so it would be great if the series could be granted a solid base for the future. Pierre explains that in his early years he was always last around the first buoy and had to start his race from there to move up the ranks. He sees the parallel with MetaMarine. They guys have been together now for some years and the setup of the boat is apparently close to perfect. “In Malta I have seen the MetaMarine taking corners at speeds that I thought would be impossible for such a bulky boat. And it would have been impossible for them a couple of years ago. I am convinced of that. But they have grown as a team since their first entry, they developed the boat well and now they are in the top spot overall. With 2B1 Furnibo, Frank and I have seen a similar development in the way we set up the boat and are able to drive it as a team. It would be great to see this sort of development with more teams. But for that to happen we need stability and the certainty that the series will continue in the years to come”.
About the start of the races in the weekend, Pierre also wants to air his vision to us. Pierre is all for Evolution and SuperSport hitting the waters at the same time. For the crowd this means more things are going on on the water and on film it will look even more spectacular. The more boats the better and having to deal with each other’s wakes makes the racing all the more exciting. Pierre has one reservation though. This can only be done if the Evolution boats, the faster, closed canopy boats, start in front of the SuperSport , open top boats. Pierre explains: “If anything goes wrong in SuperSport because it being open top boats, there is always a chance for one of the drivers to be thrown overboard. If the Evolution boats come storming at this poor guy or girl in the water, still all close together just after the start, it is going to be a very dangerous situation. This can be prevented by starting the Evolution boats first, followed by the SuperSport boats. When the water is wide enough, starting all boats together is of course also an option”.
Pierre leaves us with compliments for his throttle man Frank Hemelaer. Pierre says: “We still have so much fun together and we complement each other perfectly in the boat. We know what the other guy is doing without saying a word a having to make a gesture. With the boat now in tip top condition again, we look forward to go to Sardinia and see if we can go for top spot again. I have a good feeling for the next couple of races. I would also like to thank Benjamin van Riet. He is not only our spare driver but also the jack of all trades and really a driving force for the team. He always has the boat set up perfectly for us, he is responsible for the support truck and I can go on and on. Benjamin is instrumental in keeping the team at the level where we are now. ” And who are we to argue with that? We from PowerboatPro will keep a close eye on 2B1 racing and hope to see them do well in Sardinia.
Article and pictures courtesy of 2B1 Racing Team and Pierre Colpin.
More information about 2B1 Racing Team can be found on their website and their profile page on FaceBook.
Pierre Colpin can also be found on FaceBook.
More information on UIM Grand Prix of the Sea can be found on their official website. Here also the media database is managed.
