Tuesday, August 19: Hours, weeks and months of meticulous preparation will be put to the test this weekend when spectacular Lake Toba in deepest Sumatra hosts the 3^rd Grand Prix of Indonesia, the opening round of the 2025 UIM F1H2O World Championship.

A late start to the 2025 season will see five top class Grand Prix shoehorned into the last five months of the calendar year. The race in Indonesia starts the action for the third successive season, although a switch to an August date should see slightly better weather conditions, particularly with the racing activity taking place in the mornings on the world’s largest volcanic lake.

Following the Balige-based event this weekend, equipment will be shipped to China for a pair of back-to-back Grand Prix in Shanghai and Zhengzhou in early October. There will then be a traditional finale to the championship in the Middle East with a new venue in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, hosting the penultimate round at the end of November and the UAE emirate of Sharjah hosting the traditional final round on Khaled Lagoon the week before Christmas.

Last week’s five-day aquabiking bonanza was an unmitigated success with the 16-year-old Indonesian Boanerges Ratag making history by being crowned as the youngest ever World Endurance Champion and Jasmiin Ypraus, Oliver Koch Hansen, François Medori and Roberto Mariani winning the Grand Prix in their respective categories.

With attention now turning to the world’s premier single-hull power boating series, who will follow in the footsteps of Poland’s Bartek Marszalek and Canada’s Rusty Wyatt - the winners of the race on Lake Toba in 2023 and 2024 - and both also picking up their first ever career Grand Prix wins to boot?

Ten teams and 20 drivers will line-up this weekend, although there have been some musical chairs amongst the drivers in the close season and the Grand Prix of Indonesia will see the first F1H2O appearances for Mansoor Al-Mansoori of Team Abu Dhabi and Damon Cohen of the Comparato F1 Team.

Team Sweden (known as Team Vietnam in 2024) were the form operation last year and earned a clean sweep of the Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships and the F1H2O Pole Position Trophy. Team leader Jonas Andersson is a three-time World Champion and he lines up this year with team-mates Johan Österberg and Kalle Viippo in support. The Swede won the world title in 2021, 2023 and 2024 and has 36 podium finishes and 16 GP wins to his name.

Last year, Rusty Wyatt produced one of the most spectacular finishes in Grand Prix history to stun his rivals on Lake Toba and earn a win on his debut with the Sharjah Team. As Andersson and Erik Stark faltered on the final lap, the Ontario-based Canadian came around the outside like a sling shot to snatch a thrilling victory. That set the rookie up for a memorable season and the outcome of the Drivers’ Championship was only decided in Andersson’s favour at the final round in Sharjah when Wyatt retired from his Sprint race and Andersson went on to win the Grand Prix.

For 2025, Wyatt remains under the management of four-time World Champion Scott Gillman at the Sharjah Team and will be joined by young Estonian Stefan Arand and third driver Filip Roms. Arand began the 2024 season working alongside Andersson at Team Vietnam and is looking forward to the new challenge.

Team Abu Dhabi has one of the most formidable records in the history of the sport but trophies and success have evaded the operation running under the management of 10-time World Champion Guido Cappellini since 2022. Last year, was a struggle with driver changes not helping team stability but the UAE-based operation pulled a master stroke by signing the talented Swede Erik Stark for a second time to lead the operation this year.

Stark has 16 podiums and five wins in his career thus far and was one of the few drivers able to match and beat Andersson in 2024. He finished third in the Drivers’ Championship with the Victory Team before making the switch to Team Abu Dhabi.

The team based out of the Abu Dhabi Marine Sports Club (ADMSC) has a record of seven Teams’ Championships and four Drivers’ Championships but is also keen to nurture local talent. Rashed Al-Qemzi is retained as a third driver but the team issued a shock announcement a couple of weeks ago, detailing that veteran Thani Al-Qamzi was hanging up his helmet and his place in the team would be taken by Mansoor Al-Mansoori, the Emirati making the step-up from the UIM F2 World Championship.

Originally, the China CTIC Team had planned to run boats for Frenchman Peter Morin and American racer Brent Dillard in 2025. But Dillard required back surgery in the close season and has decided to take time out to fully recover. That decision opened the door for Australian racer Grant Trask to return to F1H2O racing action. He made his racing debut in 2016 and has competed in 19 races.  

Morin was one of the form drivers in 2024 and narrowly missed out on third in the final Drivers’ Championship in Sharjah. He has seven career podium finishes to his name, is yet to win a Grand Prix, but will be hoping to help the China CTIC Team improve on last year’s third place in the Teams’ Championship.

The Strømøy Racing F1H2O Team retains a stable line-up with 2023 race winner Bartek Marszalek running alongside racing all-rounder Marit Strømøy. The duo finished fifth in last year’s Teams’ Championship and fifth and seventh in the Drivers’ series. Marit is a veteran of 103 race starts and will continue the development of the four-stroke V8 360 APX Mercury engine this season. She has five career podiums but made history by winning the Grand Prix of Sharjah in 2015 to become the first woman ever to take the top step of the podium.

Three-time World Champion Shaun Torrente announced his retirement from the sport at the end of a disappointing 2023 season with Team Abu Dhabi. But you can never keep a good man down and the attraction of a return to the sport proved too much for the Florida-based racer. An offer to rejoin the Victory Team he first raced with in 2015 was the carrot that Torrente needed and he is back with a vengeance to work alongside young Finn Alec Weckström and Emirati Ahmad Al-Fahim.

Torrente has won 11 Grand Prix in his career thus far and world titles in 2018, 2019 and 2022 and is a natural replacement for Stark in the Victory Team, which finished fourth in last year’s Teams’ Championship.

After an ill-fated move to Team Abu Dhabi for the first part of the 2024 season, Alberto Comparato returns to full-time action with his own Comparato F1 Team. The Italian will be hoping to build upon a single podium finish (Sharjah 2022) in his career so far, although he did take pole position for the first time in San Nazzaro in 2021.

Damon Cohen has joined as the second driver and will make his Grand Prix debut on Lake Toba. The Australian is a familiar face in the F1H2O paddock as an engine builder and lead mechanic to Grant Trask and his brother Brock.

Three other teams have retained the same line-ups for 2025. Two-time World Champion Sami Sëlio runs the Red Devil-SMC F1 Team and the Finn again lines up with Dutchman Ferdinand Zandbergen. Sëlio made his debut in the series back in 1998 - winning the ‘Rookie of the Year’ award - and the flying Finn is now concentrating on achieving success in a boat he designed himself during his time with the Sharjah Team.

He debuted the new hull in the UAE last December and also gave seat time to test driver Roope Virtanen at winter test sessions. World Champion in 2007 and 2010, Sëlio will be hoping to break a nine-year interlude since he last earned a Grand Prix victory in Harbin.

The F1 Atlantic Team was formed by Portuguese racer Duarte Benavente who made its debut in the UIM F1H2O World Championship in 1999. The veteran again teams up with Great Britain’s Ben Jelf, who joined the operation at the end of 2022. Jelf’s pace has developed rapidly over the last two seasons: he finished ninth in the Drivers’ Championship last year.

Maverick Racing retains the services of Cedric Deguisne and Alexandre Bourgeot. The brainchild of French veteran racer Jean Vital Deguisne, the team joined the championship in 2015 and the French duo will compete alongside each other for the fifth successive season. Maverick Racing finished seventh, eighth, 10^th and ninth in the last four Teams’ Championships.

Lake Toba is an immense natural wonder that occupies the caldera of a super volcano that was formed by a gigantic climate-changing eruption around 70,000 years ago. Toba Caldera is one of 20 geoparks in Indonesia and was recognised in 2020 as one of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.

Technical checks and registration formalities will take place on Thursday in Balige before the drivers take to the water for the first time this season in the F1H2O series with an hour of free practice starting at 07.00hrs (local time – GMT+7) on Friday. After a short break to make any necessary changes to the set-up, the three-stage qualifying session gets underway from 10.30hrs.

Not only will qualifying determine the starting order for the Grand Prix of Indonesia, but it will also sort the running order for the two Sprint races to be staged on Saturday morning. Sprint race one fires into life at 11.10hrs and the second one gets underway at 11.40hrs.

Teams will be permitted a one-hour warm-up session on Sunday morning before the 3^rd Grand Prix of Indonesia takes centre stage on Lake Toba from 11.15hrs.