Sami Seliö (born 5 May 1975 in Lohja, Finland) is a Finnish powerboat racer and two-time Formula 1 Powerboat World Champion. Seliö races for the Mad Croc BaBa Racing team and has competed in the series since 1998.

Racing career

Seliö began his career in Finland in the national SJ-15 class in 1988, a category which he won 1990. By the mid 1990s he had progressed up the classes and in 1996 finished third overall in the Formula 4 World Championship. In

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

he made his debut in Formula 1 and a string of points finishes brought with it the Rookie of the Year award for 1998. Over the following years Seliö gained experience and in

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

enjoyed his best season to date as he finished second in the championship. Two years later in

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

, Seliö won the first of his World Championships. He was 16 points behind Italian Guido Cappellini entering the last race of the season in Sharjah, but as Cappellini wrecked his boat with ten laps to go, Seliö won the race to give him the championship by a margin of just four points. The 2007 season began a sequence of four consecutive years where Seliö never ended lower than third in the championship. In his title defence year of

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, he finished runner-up and he slipped one place to third at the end of

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

. The 2010 season would see Seliö clinch his second world title, again coming from behind in the points, this time to beat

Jay Price A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian ...

, at the final race of the year. In October

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

in Liuzhou,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, Seliö lost control of his boat at 200 km/h and was concussed, broke his

rib In vertebrate anatomy, ribs ( la, costae) are the long curved bones which form the rib cage, part of the axial skeleton. In most tetrapods, ribs surround the chest, enabling the lungs to expand and thus facilitate breathing by expanding the ches ...

s and coccyx, and his right eye developed a

hematoma A hematoma, also spelled haematoma, or blood suffusion is a localized bleeding outside of blood vessels, due to either disease or trauma including injury or surgery and may involve blood continuing to seep from broken capillary, capillaries. A he ...

. He missed the final two races of the season, but was able to return in time for

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

, where he eventually finished fourth overall. In

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

Seliö would also finish fourth at the end of the season but entered the final race leading the championship. Having crashed out of qualifying he started well down the field and a retirement in the race meant no points, and the chance at a third title was lost.

Racing record

Complete Formula 1 Powerboat World Championship results

* Season still in progress. * The 1999 Grand Prix of Russia was halted after 12 laps with results annulled and no points awarded. * The starting grid for the 1999 Grand Prix of Turkey was formed on the basis of current championship standings following the İzmit earthquake, with the race held as planned on Sunday 22 August. * The 1999 Grand Prix of Austria was stopped after seven laps, with the results taken from the completion of the seventh lap, and no points awarded. * The 2004 Grand Prix of Korea was run under the 'match race' format, and the event thus did not count towards the final championship standings and no points were awarded. * The 2005 Grand Prix of Singapore was halted after 18 laps, with half points awarded.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Selio, Sami Finnish motorboat racers 1975 births Sportspeople from Lohja Living people Formula 1 Powerboat drivers