TEDESCHI: RELIABILITY KEY TO SUPERSPORT TITLE

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Reigning SuperSport champion and current class leader Angelo Tedeschi reckons that his #44 Conam Yachts Racing Project team's continued strong reliability, rather than its outright pace, will be the key to its ability to retain its title as it enters the second half of the 2008 season.

The Mercury-powered Chaudron hull has been the most consistent and fastest SuperSport class boat in the first half of the year, having only been beaten in the Sprint race of the season-opening Italian Grand Prix of the Sea weekend after being applied a penalty for a jump start. Tedeschi reckons that it's his team's engineering strength rather than it's on-track performance which is proving crucial to the outfit's success.

‘It looked easy in Tunisia, but it's never easy,’ Tedeschi said. ‘In the Sunday Sprint race, it was quite rough ˜ not so much as it was this morning, but it was always changing from lap to lap. As a result we didn't have the optimum propellers. The #07 VoomVoom.com boat was quite strong in the first couple of laps, but then they dropped back so we were able to back off over the last couple of laps.

‘Everybody is closing on us, but it's slowly and we're very satisfied with our performance ˜ especially the reliability. That will be very important over the second half of the year, as it will help us maintain our lead, so reliability is something we'll keep working hard on.’