| Sheikh Hassan and Steve Curtis will have an improved boat for the Hypo Group Montenegrin Grand Prix in Budva in two weeks time, as the Qatar Team prepares to take the fight to their main rivals and championship leaders, Victory 1. “Matteo and his guys have put a lot of work in to up grade the spare boat for the next race and for sure we will have more performance than in Doha,” said Curtis, back in the UK after two days of testing alongside Luca Nicolini on Lake Lecco in Italy. Sheikh Hassan and Curtis were forced to run their spare boat with Mercury V8s for the opening race of the season after a crash in qualifying wrecked their race boat – but in Budva they will run the Skema V12 power-plants. “Running our V12s will make a difference but whether or not we have enough (power) to match |
Victory is still questionable – but if we get rough seas on the outside leg we will be in good shape.” “The test went well,” said team manager and Qatar 95 throttleman, Matteo Nicolini. “We test for two days and the performance is very good. We have made some hull modifications and also aerodynamic ones and Steve worked on the boat in between the two tests to make his own adjustments to have a boat more similar to what he has been used to. “In my boat (95) we have not done any major changes just normal maintenance, but Skema is working on our engines to improve the performance and try to reduce the big gap existing now between our engines and Victory Team’s.” Nicolini also confirmed that the first major test for the new NO C1CAT will take place on Lake Lecco next week. |
