Crash at the Grand Prix of France for Bernd Enzenhofer!
The first European heat of the powerboat Formula 1 Championship in Evian/Lake Geneva was meant to be Enzenhofer’s second baptism of fire in the premier league of motorboat racing after his debut in Doha/Qatar. But instead it already ended in practice 1 as a baptism of water: in the first of the two 150 km/h (95 mph) double left-handed buoy turns Bernd Enzenhofer crashed his MOTORGLASS-boat heavily. In one of the long and louche waves of this big lake and area of water Austria’s only Formula-1-driver hooked in and rolled the boat sideways.
“Additionally to the bad luck with this wave I have as well been a little too crisp on the trim and these 425- HP-rockets do not condone the merest hint of driving errors”, Enzenhofer explained. Uninjured he got out of the cockpit under water, just on this day of all days – his birthday. Enzenhofer’s confidence did not get any severe cracks quite contrary to his F1H2O catamaran. “On the right hand side primary structures of the hull got damaged and due to the carbon fibre construction it is not possible to fix that on site”, Bernd with more details why his race weekend was finished in the first hour of the French Grand Prix yet.
“Until the next WC-heat in Portugal on the first weekend of August both our powerboat and our motivation will shine in new splendour again and the experience of Evian will have been digested and forgotten”, so Wilfried Weiland, two-time world champion and now Bernd Enzenhofer’s coach and mentor with no doubts at all that experiences like that are simply part of professional motorsports.
