Team and driver changes The 2015 season would see the biggest team and driver changes for some time, as sporting and political decisions upset the balance of recent years. By far the most significant development was the Qatar Team's withdrawal from the sport following a merger between the Qatar Sailing Federation and Qatar Marine Sports Federation (QMSF); the latter of the two bodies having previously run the Qatar F1H2O operation. The team ran a single boat at the opening race on home waters in Doha for Shaun Torrente, with former teammate and triple world champion
Alex Carella having already left for bitter rivals Team Abu Dhabi. Carella had been tempted to switch teams after manoeuvres behind the scenes at Team Abu Dhabi resulted in
Guido Cappellini replacing
Scott Gillman as the team's technical director. But whilst Torrente won the opening race of the year for the Qatar Team, by June the squad had been shut down, and Torrente instead joined forces with the widely respected
offshore outfit
Victory Team, who now turned their attention to the
inshore scene. At Team Abu Dhabi Carella was initially partnered with Thani Al Qamzi, but on 13 March, the day before the season-opening Qatar GP, Al Qamzi and new team principal Cappellini had a bitter argument over which boat the driver should use. The outcome resulted in Al Qamzi being sacked from the team, and at the eleventh hour was replaced by Italian rookie David Del Pin. After the second round in
France however, Del Pin was demoted to reserve driver and Al Qamzi returned to Team Abu Dhabi in time for the third race in
Portugal. Returning to how he began his team in the 1990s prior to Abu Dhabi involvement, Gillman described his new venture as aiming to "nurture Emirati talent". For the first race of the year, with no F1 hull readily available at such short notice, Gillman and Al Hameli had to source an F2 boat – Ivan Brigada's BaBa from the previous year – replacing the smaller capacity F2 engine for an F1-standard one. By the second round of the year, the team had new BaBa hulls ready to race, and alongside Al Hameli, Erik Stark was signed from Team Nautica. Considered one of the sport's brightest prospects, Stark had finished sixth in the 2014 championship, and backed the performance up with a third-place finish in the first race of 2015. Stark was replaced at Team Nautica by Frenchman Christophe Larigot, making his debut in F1, and prior to the French GP, Nautica announced they would be changing their team name to Team EMIC, at the same time switching from racing under the American flag, to the Emirati one. Brigada's former employers Caudwell Racing did not return for 2015, having folded last year without completing the season. This left Brigada and Slovakia's Tomáš Čermák without drives and ensured that the field returned to being entirely powered by 2.5 litre
two stroke Mercury engines. Reigning champions CTIC China Team retained their line-up of
Philippe Chiappe and Xiong Ziwei, and F1 GC Atlantic Team, Mad Croc BaBa Racing and Team Sweden, also all named unchanged line-ups from 2014. Francesco Cantando's Motorglass F1 Team saw a change as Austrian Bernd Enzenhofer joined, whilst Bartek Marszalek skipped the first race in Qatar and rejoined the team from the French GP. France also saw the entry of another new team alongside Victory, with French team Maverick Racing running Cédric Deguisne, who returned to the sport after a ten-year absence. Maverick competed in just the French and Portuguese rounds and did not travel with the rest of the teams for the remaining races outside of Europe. ==Season calendar==