Thursday, October 17:  Current UIM F1H2O World Championship leader Rusty Wyatt topped the times with a lap of 44.565sec in the third free practice session for the New Development Grand Prix of Zhengzhou-China on Thursday afternoon.

Sharjah Team’s Rusty Wyatt and Strømøy Racing’s Marit Strømøy were the first two racers on to the Yellow River course at the start of the third free practice session. The Canadian was on the pace from the outset and set an early flier of 44.923sec. After sitting out the second practice stint, the Red Devil SMC F1 Team’s Sami Seliö was back in action early in session three and posted an early run of 45.180sec.

Wyatt then bettered his times with a 44.829sec with several drivers still to take to the race course with 46 minutes of the session remaining. Team Abu Dhabi Thani Al-Qamzi had also sat out session two and the Emirati bounced back strongly with a third lap of 45.012sec to slot in behind between Wyatt and Seliö.

Ben Jelf’s F1 Atlantic Team had changed his engine between the first two qualifying sessions to assess which one was better suited to the race course but he sat out the last stint along with Ahmad Al-Fahim and Jonas Andersson.

A resurgent Al-Qamzi and team-mate Rashed Al-Qemzi were running on a much faster pace and held second and fifth in the standings after 25 minutes.

As the session progressed, Wyatt improved on his times with a lap of 44.565sec and the CTIC China Team’s Peter Morin carded a 44.909sec run to move ahead of Al-Qamzi.

The session was then red-flagged with just under 12 minutes on the clock after two yellow buoys were destroyed. The bragging rights for topping the times fell to Wyatt from Morin, Al-Qamzi and Seliö.