DUBAI 24 Hours

I thought it would be interesting for you to have a report after the race in Dubai;

The trip was very rewarding if not a little intense and extremely tiring. We spent some time with the settings of the car and acclimatising all drivers to the circuit and the car; unfortunately there is never enough time for us all in the car.

The team was made up with 3 professional drivers (James Kaye – team owner / driver, Mark Lemmer, Luke Hines) and myself and Raed Hussain as keen and capable amateurs in the context of the other drivers of the team. We qualified the car with a time inside the top 35, out of 80 cars, but due to technical problems not all the drivers were able to be in the qualifying session so we were obliged to start at the back. This however did not compromise our early performance and we made up 27 places in the first 2 laps alone.

The crowds were strong for the race and the temperature not too high (24 – 26 degrees) but the humidity was high which makes the driving very difficult. After the strong start having made up all those places we began to encounter some technical problems with the car which meant we spent too much time in the pits. When my turn came to drive it was already well into the night and I was learning to drive the circuit in the dark. This may not sound so hard but when you see the visibility we have and consider we are sat low in the car it makes it difficult to see any references points. The video is from another car but it is a very good illustration as to how hard it really is to see in the night while racing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVKTqbMcMH4 it calls for intense concentration.

As the race went on our technical troubles increased and we finished a long way down the order; there were some highlights for me, night time racing, the fastest lap time all weekend for our car and a top speed of 245kmh on a straight of only 800m!!! I have also received a mention on the www.4tuning.ro website which was quite unexpected and they have published on this site some pictures from the event. Many more pictures can be seen at the www.24hseries.com web site as well as the official results and other information.

Attached are a few pictures of the race and the atmosphere and the BBQ that the team organised for the weekend – we had 2 chefs looking after us so we were never short of good food to keep up our energy levels.

I am sorry that I have not more to report about the racing but quite simply we did not do enough!