Fazza make perfect start to XCAT World Series

Arif Al Zaffain and Nadir Bin Hendi cruised to a comfortable victory in the opening round of the 2014 UIM Skydive Dubai XCAT World Series at DIMC – Mina Seyahi on Saturday.

The Fazza team were entirely untroubled as they started in pole position and maintained their lead throughout the 15-lap race.

The more intriguing battle was, however, taking place in their wake, as Salem Al Adidi and Talib Al Sayed in Victory Team started in second but were eventually overtaken by the Skydive Dubai duo of Sultan Al Dhaheri and Jay Price.

Mouawad (Omar Danial and Gary Ballough) meanwhile had a great afternoon. Having started the race in ninth position the Swiss-American combination powered their way through the field to finish in fourth.

Thrilled with yet another win in Dubai (after taking the overall 2013 Series title here a month ago), Fazza driver, Bin Hendi said: "It’s a great honour to win again in Dubai. We finished the last Series with a win in Dubai and now we came back here and we did a good show. This victory just shows that Fazza is always number one.”

Price admitted that a different strategy on when to take their mandatory two long laps may well have benefited his team but was happy with second spot.

“We should have done our long laps in the beginning so that we didn’t waste time trying to overtake the Victory Team but we got there in the end,” he said.

“We were very happy with the set up this morning compared to yesterday because yesterday we weren’t as fast. I think if we had had this setup yesterday, we could have been on pole position.”

With Fazza now topping the overall standings with the maximum 400 points, XCAT action moves to Fujairah, on the East coast of the UAE, for the second round of the Series from February 12-14.

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