Winner Alpo smashes round-island record

The formidable pairing of Mario Invernizzi and Giovanni Carpitella raced to an emphatic Evolution class victory for the Alpo team in yesterday's first leg of the Powerboat P1 Grand Prix of Malta. In doing so the Italians smashed the existing round-island speed record at an average speed of 107.48km/hour.

Equally as impressive was the performance of the British ARPRO team of Jackie Hunt and Mike Shelton who, in their debut race in a brand new American-built Dragon boat, won the SuperSport class by a margin of over five minutes.

The choppy seas took their toll in this highly testing start to the P1 season with almost half the competitors retiring, the most dramatic of which involved the 2005 World Champions Wettpunkt, whose boat suffered a fire when halfway around the island and lying in second place.

Another notable retirement was the Italian Speedbuster team of Marco Pennesi, his Seatek powered Metamarine craft had started slowly but by lap four had moved up six places to compete for third spot before the engine blew.

In glorious sunshine with thousands lining the shoreline, 18 boats started this eagerly awaited first race of the 2006 season.

Engine problems for Chaudron

Excitement grew as the Maltese Chaudron Team of Aaron and Audrien Ciantar in distinctive bright yellow colours, emerged from the spray and rooster-tails with a top five place and looked certain to feature on the podium until the engine overheated and they were forced to retire after 20 minutes of hard racing.

Pushing them all the way was the British-based Chinese entry, Ocean Dragon Racing whose fifth place in class was a remarkable achievement for this new team whose previous experience had been largely confined to national championships.

OSG Donzi completed a successful afternoon with a well deserved second place in the Evolution category with the 2004 champions Thuraya third.

In Supersport Buzzi Bullet came through the field in impressive fashion to take second place with the new Italian team, Albatro 1390 close behind in third.

High waves made for spectacular action throughout the afternoon as the boats flew through the air and crashed through the waves.

Whilst the winners dominated their respective classes, the racing remained exciting throughout and was dramatic, competitive and definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Meanwhile, the Malta Grand Prix resumes this afternoon at 2.30 p.m. with a 50.6 nautical mile rally race off the Sliema coast.