Tuesday, April 1: The China CTIC Team’s Brent Dillard confirmed on Monday that back surgery will prevent him from starting the new UIM F1H2O World Championship season. His place in the team alongside Peter Morin will be taken by Australian racer Grant Trask.

Speaking from the USA on Monday afternoon, Dillard said: “I will be missing most of the season as I am having spinal surgery done. I will have a fusion of the L4 and L5 vertebrae. I had a fusion done on my spine in 2014 and they last for about 10 years because, once you take a disc out of your spine, it puts pressure on all the other discs. So, in February, I was driving my car and my back just gave out. I went to the doctor who did my surgery in 2014. He carried out an X-ray, then MRI and a discogram and that confirmed where the pain was coming from. Now I will have a disc taken out of my spine and four screws and a spacer will go into my vertebrae.

Right now, we are hoping that I will be ready for the last race of the season in Sharjah but Grand Trask will take my place in the meantime. I have spoken with him and we have decided that he will be my replacement until my back heals.

I’m sure that Grant will grasp at the opportunity and I wish him well for the start of the new season.”

Trask last competed in 2023 as a team-mate to Filip Roms in the Mad Croc Gillman Racing Team. He made his F1H2O racing debut in 2016 and has competed in 19 Grand Prix, the 36-year-old’s best result being sixth place with the EMIC Racing Team in Sharjah that year – a feat he repeated with the F1 Atlantic Team in London in 2018.