On Sunday, Victory 3’s Salem Al-Adidi and Eisa Al-Ali and Team Abu Dhabi 5’s Rashed Al-Tayer and Majed Al-Mansoori repeated their 1-2 finish in the second race of this weekend’s Union Internationale Motonautique XCAT World Championship opening series on Longhu Lake in Zhengzhou, China.

The Dubai-based Victory 3 team won the first two races of the XCAT World Championship. Photos courtesy Raffaello Bastiani/XCAT

In gloomy conditions during the Zhengzhou Grand Prix, the Dubai-based crew led from start to finish to hold off the challenge from its Emirati rivals for the second successive day to take an early advantage in the eight-race XCAT World Championship. Both teams were the class of the field on Saturday and Sunday.

On Sunday, Australian Brett Luhrmann and Norway’s Pal-Virik Nilsen rounded out the podium in The Blue Roo 8 boat, while the experienced Giovanni Carpitella and Joakhim Kumlin finished fourth in 222 Offshore with the Italian pairing of Serafino Baresi and Alessandro Barone completing the top five in Fujairah Racing 20.

On Saturday, Italian teammates Diego Testa and Daniele Martignoni were the surprise package of the first of six XCAT races in the People’s Republic in the space of three weeks. They guided Caccia Engineering 22 to the final slot on the podium while The Blue Roo team took fourth and the Swedish pairing of Mikael Bengtsson and Erik Stark rounded off the top five in Swecat Racing 2.

Team Abu Dhabi finished second in both of the XCAT races in Zhengzhou, China.

“It would have been nice to take a win this weekend, but we have started the XCAT program with two strong finishes and have put ourselves in a good position to maintain the challenge for the title over the next couple of weeks,” said Al-Tayer in a press release from the Abu Dhabi International Marine Sports Club.

The series resumes next weekend (Oct. 20-22) in Weihai, China, and continues the following weekend (Oct. 27-29) in Xiamen, China. The fourth and final round of the season is set to take place Nov. 30-Dec. 2 in Dubai.

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