Sami Seliö produced a faultless drive to take his first podium of the season with third place in the Grand Prix of China, teammate Filip Roms coming home in 11th place.
The race win went to Team CTIC China with Philippe Chiappe leading from start-to-finish to give the team their maiden win on home waters. Second place went Team Abu Dhabi’s Thani Al Qamzi.
Unlike yesterday’s qualifying session conditions for the 45-Lap Grand Prix of China were good with Seliö lining up in P4 of 16, inside him the defending World Champion and pole-sitter Philippe Chiappe, Thani Al Qamzi and Yousef Al Rubayan.
Two. He would have to watch for on his outside were Alex Carella and Shaun Torrente.
From the flag Chiappe clearly had incredible pace and immediately started to build a lead, behind him Seliö was starting to close in on Al Rubayan and on lap 3 made the pass to move into third spot.
The first early casualty was Carella, followed by Francesco Cantando.
Despite his efforts Seliö was unable to make any inroads to close down Al Qamzi, the front three running line astern to the chequered flag.
“Of course I am happy with that result and being back on the podium at last. We should have been there already this season, said Seliö. “I was worried before and during the race that we would have a problem. We have had so many little issues all weekend changing this and that. And this morning we still had a fuel pressure problem but the worry was that we couldn’t find the reason”.
“Luckily in the race everything ran well and the team did a great job so that I could my job but Thani drove a great race there was nothing I could do to close the gap. I needed him to make a mistake. Once or twice the gap came down and I was hoping that maybe when the back markers came into play I could take advantage. But he is an experienced driver and didn’t make a mistake.”
Round 5 of the Championship takes place in Abu Dhabi on the 10-11 December with today’s result putting Seliö into 7th position. The decision he needs to take is whether to revert to his new boat which will be repaired and ready or to stay with the one that delivered the podium.
“This will be a hard decision for the team. This boat ran very well in the race but we would have to work on the set-up for qualifying. We have time so we will see.”