The UIM E1 World Championship will stage the fifth race of its 2026 calendar in Luanda, Angola, on Sunday, and with a tight battle between Team Brady and Hollywood star Will Smith’s Team Westbrook by Visit Angola, the stakes are high.
Defending champions Team Brady, owned by former American football star Tom Brady, lead the standings with 119 points, followed closely by Team Westbrook on 110. With the calm waters off the Yacht Club of Luanda, conditions are expected to produce fast racing this weekend.
E1 is in its third season and continues to grow in stature as it stages its first race in Southern Africa and its second on the continent following Lagos in 2025.
There are several unique aspects to the series, not least that each team has two pilots, one male and one female, bringing gender parity to the water.
Team Brady have Emma Kimiläinen and Sam Coleman in the cockpit as they seek a third championship in a row, having dominated the sport since the series began in 2024.
“You have male and female pilots racing these fully electric, hydrofoiling, spaceship-looking powerboats in different conditions and spectacular locations. There are multiple races, the pace is fast and the only constant is change. It is really exciting,” Kimiläinen, a former motor racing driver, tells SuperSport in an exclusive interview.
“There are two pilots, one male and one female, and we are equally paired. We take turns racing and both of us need to perform if the team is going to get a good result.
“The cockpit is quite similar to a Formula 1 car. The steering wheel is very much like the one you would have in Formula 1 and we have all the controls available to us to fly the boat.
“The difference is that in a Formula car or rally car you set the car up and then you generally stick with that while you are driving. In the RaceBird we can change things while we are racing.
“That means you almost have to do the engineering job in your head while you are driving. That makes it really interesting and requires a lot of finesse.”
Kimiläinen says having the correct strategy is key, as is understanding the changing water conditions throughout the race.
“The strategy changes all the time depending on where you start and where you find yourself after the first corner, which is very important,” she says.
“We have a normal lap, a short lap and a long lap, and you need to take both the short and long lap once during the race. You cannot take them consecutively.
“There are people in the team constantly working out the strategy while we are racing, but as pilots we also need to understand what is happening and know when we should take those laps.
“The difficulty is that we do not always know exactly where the other boats will be because the strategy is constantly changing, so we rely a lot on mission control and the rest of the team.”
Coleman comes from a powerboat background and explains how the E1 boats move through the water.
“They are almost less like a boat and more like an aeroplane,” he says. “We fly above the water at around 50 knots, which is a similar sort of speed to SailGP or the America’s Cup.
“They are hydrofoiling and electrically powered rather than using an internal combustion engine, so there is a lot of new technology involved.
“It is much more like flying a plane very close to the surface. If you imagine flying a plane through a tunnel with a ceiling and a floor, that is probably the closest analogy. If we go too high, the foil comes out of the water and we stall. If we go too low, we create drag and hit the surface.”
He says the experience for the pilots is one of extreme speed, while each race also takes a physical toll.
“The sensation of speed is crazy because it is very visceral. There is a lot going on. The foils vibrate and whistle when you are going really fast and you can hear the vibration from the motor,” he says.
“There are sounds and sensations that would normally be hidden by an internal combustion engine. When the boat is right on the limit, it becomes quite an angry little thing.
“It takes a lot of finesse to drive it well because the working window is very small. Performance is on a knife edge.”
The constantly changing water conditions require continual thought and adjustments to get the maximum out of each boat.
“That is one of the biggest variables because the water is never the same. Every 100 or 200 metres can be different,” Coleman says.
“You might think you are going out to set your fastest qualifying lap, but then you follow a boat that has disturbed the water and suddenly your racing line is compromised.
“You are constantly hunting for clean water because you do not want to follow another boat. The aerated water they leave behind affects your lift and your speed.
“It becomes a constant game of finding little advantages over your opponents. It is a little bit like dirty air in Formula One – following another competitor can be difficult, so you have to find other options.”
Coleman says the range of backgrounds among the pilots across the teams adds to the excitement of the series.
“It is a really exciting mix of backgrounds. We have racers and incredible athletes like Emma who come from track-based motorsport and Formula cars, while I come from offshore powerboat racing, which could hardly be more different,” he says.
“We also have rally drivers and sailors. It is about adapting and learning from one another.
“I have learned a lot from Emma about searching for milliseconds and tenths of a second. In offshore racing I am used to looking at averages over a much longer distance and adapting to changing water.
“Emma is used to a perfectly flat track and finding that next tenth of a second. We can learn from each other, but we also keep half an eye on the other teams to see whether they are doing something differently. It is still new to all of us.”
Coleman is positive about the future of E1 in the coming years.
“I think there will be more stops and more exciting locations,” he says. “We do not have the same restrictions as some other motorsports when it comes to getting into cities because we are not closing down roads and infrastructure. We use busy waterways, of course, but the event can have a relatively low impact on the surrounding city.
“That gives us the opportunity to race in some incredible locations that other forms of motorsport cannot necessarily reach. Formula One cannot go to Venice, for example, but we have raced in Venice.
“There are so many opportunities for the championship and I think the possibilities are endless.”