ABU DHABI: Team Abu Dhabi’s Alex Carella is perfectly positioned to challenge for victory in Friday’s 24th Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi after qualifying in a stunning pole position for the penultimate round of the UIM F1 H2O World Championship.

The Italian reached the six-boat Q3 shoot-out and carded a storming second lap of 45.86 seconds in ideal racing conditions on the challenging Abu Dhabi course to claim pole.

Finland’s double World Champion Sami Selio pushed Carella all the way but came up just short with a time of 46.99 seconds to settle into second place.

Defending champion and current series leader Phlippe Chiappe carded a best tour of 47.33 sec and will start the race in third. Kuwait’s Yousef Al-Rubayan had laid down the Q3 gauntlet with a best time of 47.47 seconds and qualified in fourth place.

Emirati Ahmed Al-Hameli qualified fifth with a lap of 48.94 seconds, but Jonas Andersson spluttered through his opening lap before suffering fuel issues that prevented him from recording a lap time.

Thani Al-Qamzi will start the race from 17th place in the second Team Abu Dhabi boat after he suffered ongoing engine issues at the start of his warm-up lap in Q1.

“We broke an engine in practice this morning and then damaged the second one and decided to make just one lap to give ourselves a time before we change the engine again tonight,” said Al-Qamzi. “I still feel I can do well tomorrow. This is my home race and it’s important that I make a good result.”

Rashed Al-Qamzi and Mohammed Al-Mehairbi are representing Team Abu Dhabi in this weekend’s two UIM F-4S races and the duo suffered mixed fortunes in the first of the timed trials.

Al-Qamzi qualified in second position behind pole winner Finland’s Anton Nyholm, but Al-Mehairbi was down in fifth. Series leader Mike Szymura struggled with technical issues and qualified in eighth of the nine entrants.

Al-Qamzi made a poor start to the 18-lap race and found himself in traffic at the first turn. The resultant delay pushed him down the leader board to fifth shortly before a yellow flag was raised with Bingchen Wu sidelined on the opening lap and Paolo Longhi also in trouble. Action resumed on lap six and Nyholm began to pull away from the pack, with Al-Qamzi moving back into second place and Al-Mehairbi holding fifth.

Nyholm’s lead had grown to 4.75 seconds at the halfway point and he maintained his pace to reach the chequered flag 11.49 seconds in front of Al-Qamzi. Mansoor Al-Mansoori finished third and Al-Meharibi climbed to fourth at the expense of Joakim Halvorsen. Szymura now holds a 34-point series lead heading into the second race on Friday afternoon.

“I didn’t make the best of starts, but I managed to get back on track and stay in touch with Anton for the rest of the race and pull away from the others,” said Al-Qamzi. “After the disappointments at the last race, I am happy to get a second place on the board here at home in Abu Dhabi.”

The morning’s one-hour F1 practice session was delayed after a collision involving Team Sweden’s Jesper Forss and Austrian racer Bernt Enzenhofer on their opening timed laps. It was Forss’s second incident at the same place in the space of two days and sidelined Enzenhofer for the rest of the weekend, but failed to prevent Jonas Andersson from claiming the fastest lap of 45.55 seconds during the session.