Team Monaco returns to home waters on Friday, July 17 and Saturday, July 18 as the UIM E1 World Championship, the all-electric powerboat racing series, holds its Monaco round at the Yacht Club de Monaco. The team is fielding Maxime Nocher and Oban Duncan, who became the youngest pilot on the E1 grid when she joined Team Monaco for the 2026 season after two years racing for Team Drogba.
The Monaco entry was launched as an initiative of His Serene Highness Prince Albert II, with the team developed over 19 months before making its championship debut at the season-opening round in Jeddah in January. Nocher, an 11-time kitefoil world champion who transitioned into powerboat racing after a serious training accident ended his Olympic ambitions, co-founded the team alongside Monaco-based entrepreneur Chris Taylor. Prince Albert II has lent his personal support to the project, tying it closely to the ocean conservation work carried out by his Foundation, which the team has described as central to its mission alongside its sporting goals.
Duncan, a Scottish powerboat racer from Balloch near Loch Lomond, began competitive boating at the age of eight and has previously won multiple national titles as well as the E1 Series’ first-ever PIF Pilot of the Season award. Speaking to Arab News ahead of an earlier round of the championship, Duncan reflected on the sport’s approach to gender parity, with each E1 team fielding one male and one female pilot. “I think season one has shown that there isn’t a huge difference between male and female pilots and that we can all compete against each other and just be as good as each other,” she said. “I think it should 100 percent encourage more women to get into it.”
Team Monaco races the all-electric RaceBird, a 7.5-metre hydrofoil boat capable of reaching speeds of up to 50 knots, powered by a 150kW electric motor and 35kWh battery. The Monaco round marks the halfway point of a season that has already taken the team to Jeddah, Doha and Dubrovnik, among other stops, as the eight-round championship continues its expansion across four continents.