Endurance Championship 2002
At the end of 2001 Hannes was approached by Matteo Nicolini, a professional Offshore Italian racer who proposed to design a very quick mono in carbon fibre.
With his brother, Luca, they entered an agreement to build a craft that could be used for pleasure and racing together, but would also be competitive under the ‘new’ rules for ‘Endurance’ in the Sport Category for the ‘02 season.
Ostia, Gaeta, Napoli
Nicolini was late producing the boat and it was a rush to get to their first race in Gaeta, near Rome. They went straight into the race without any testing. About one mile down the course, the transmission seized due to Nicolini failing to put oil in the transmission boxes. Not a good start to the season. The next race was due to be in Naples. They arrived early and had some time to test, so Matteo decided to take his girlfriend over to Capri for a pleasure trip.
Unfortunately, no filters has been mounted on the engine water intake, they picked up a plastic bag and an engine overheated and seized, ruining their chances for the race the next day.
Ostia was the next event and it turned out to be third time lucky. Weather conditions were favourable and the team achieved their first win of the season.
Round the Island
The end of August was always dominated by the Cowes Classic powerboat racing week in Cowes, Isle of Wight.
In 2002 the two Endurance races were sponsored by Honda, the first event being the ‘Around the Island’. In excellent weather the 1640hp of ‘Wettpunkt’ raced twice around in a new record time of 1hour 41mins 28secs, a distance of 121.49 nm at an average of 71.84 knots.
Cowes-Torquay-Cowes
The team started the Cowes Classic as favourites, with perfect racing conditions and on a high from the ‘Round the Island’ record. Hannes and his team led the fleet all the way to Portland Bill, however about half a mile into the crossing of Lyme Bay they broke down and, although making a successful effort to restart, they again broke down and retired.
The only trophy collected by the team was for ‘First Boat Past Portland Bill’. The winner of the event was the Italian team of Roberto Buonomo and Tommaso De Simone in ‘Super Classic 40’.
‘Wettpunkt‘s’ record time around the island was beaten on the Sunday by ‘Thunderbird’, a ProVee at 79.19 knots.
