#38 Baia crew beat odds to reach podium

Saturday 12 July 2008

The #38 Baia High Performance team got 2008 off to a flying start with a podium in Italy

The #38 Baia High Performance OSG team pulled off an absolute miracle to take a well-deserved podium in today’s SuperSport Endurance round of the Tunisian Grand Prix of the Sea. The Italian-based SuperSport outfit, which is new to Powerboat P1 this year, worked overnight to repair a heavily damaged hull after their boat was dropped off the crane on Friday afternoon while being craned out of the water.

That meant extensive repairs to the hull, which was severely cracked around its mid-section. These were done in time for the race, and pilot Stefano Acanfora and throttleman Renato Guidi were able to work their way through the field and even challenged the #07 VoomVoom.com team for second place in the closing stages.

“We suffered from the incident from the yesterday because we were not so strong for the first four or five laps as we feared we might break something,” said pilot Stefano Acanfora. “We were more concerned keeping teams behind us, rather than chasing the boats in front. By the eighth lap, though, we saw the #59 Saho boat had problems and the #07 VoomVoom.com boat had problems, so we pushed hard for two to three laps.

“A couple of laps more, and who knows what we could have done. We’re incredibly pleased considering that yesterday we had the incident in the dry pits and in just 24 hours we were on the podium, going from despair to joy. We’re optimistic for the Sprint race. We want to exploit this moment to finally beat Angelo Tedeschi and the #44 Conam Yachts, although the #59 Saho team seem to have found something.”