Balloch powerboat racer Oban Duncan "more confident than ever" in E1 machine

Balloch’s Oban Duncan says she feels more confident than ever in her E1 racing machine.

The 18-year-old helped Team Drogba to a fourth position finish in the second round of the pioneering all-electric racing series in Venice earlier this month, and hopes that teething problems experienced at the first round in Saudi Arabia are now a distant memory.

Oban told the Lennox: “Personally I feel a lot more connected with the boat. I feel like I understand it a lot more now. It’s quite a daunting thing at first because it is so different to everything we’ve done before. Now I get in it and I just feel comfortable.

“In Jeddah I was nervous, I think everyone was, because it was such a new thing. In Venice it felt a lot more laid back, I did the driving and everything else was taken care of.

“We’re getting stronger every time we’re out on the water, and we’re learning new things. We just want as much time in the boat as possible to try new things and see what we can do.

“We had a lot of debriefs and chats between Jeddah and Venice. We’ve got a couple of new members of the team working on the performance side. They can get the data from the boats to work out what’s quick and what isn’t, which makes a huge difference.

“That gives us actual proof that we’re getting quicker rather than us as drivers just saying that something looks or feels quicker. That’s made a really big difference.

“As a team we feel like we’re getting better and better with every race. We’d just met each other at Jeddah about three weeks earlier. We were still gelling as a team.

“Now I feel like we’re in a far better place and on top of things.”

A closely fought qualifying session saw Oban and Team Drogba teammate Yousef Al-Abdulrazzaq just half a second off the