Dubai 24 Hour Race January 12th & 13th 2007.

We entered the Dubai 24 Hour race. I drove with Ian Geekie and Peter Boylan. We took my Porsche 996 GT 3 Cup Car which I raced in the Malaysia Super Car Series last year. We had great fun. Ian took all the trouble putting this together. We took all the boys from Malaysia and they did a great job. We were the only Asia based team. Geoff Morgan was also to drive with us unfortunately he couldn’t make it due to his father being hospitalized.

The circuit was great and the atmosphere too. There were almost 90 teams which were mainly from Europe. During testing and qualifying we didn’t have any problems with the car. We qualified 14th. There were almost 29 Porsches and most of them were 997 cup cars which were faster than our car and also few RSR’s. After qualifying we did few changes on the car and it was better during the morning warm up session. Andy was the Team manager and I must say he did a great job too. We rented a Villa and the whole team stayed there and we really enjoyed.

I started race and after the first hour we were on the 9th position. I had 2 spins and I thought the circuit was very slippery. Then Peter drove and he had the same problem and later we found out there was a oil leak from the gear box and the oil got on the tires which made the car to spin. We got the car in to the pits and found out the leak was from one of the hoses from the gear box. We tightened the hose and went out again but still had the same problem. We didn’t have a spare hose but luckily another team lent us the hose and we finally fixed it which took almost 1hour 30 minutes. We went back to 65th position.

But once the car was fixed we were doing a sprint race and gradually getting better positions. Peter and Ian also drove very well and we did very good times. Again after 13 hours while I was driving I knew the brake pads were worn out and the brakes got locked and I came in to the pits to change to new brake pads. As they were too much worn out it took about 30 minutes to replace the pads. I just slept only for 2 hours but I was feeling great. I did the last stint and after 1 hour I knew we were running out of petrol but had to keep running. So I slowed the pace and was running slow then Andy spoke to me on the radio and said to go faster because we could catch 2 more cars and we could getter a better position so I had to get back to the pace to over take these 2 cars when I did I saw on the gauge we had not much fuel and during the last ten minutes I could feel in the corners that we didn’t have enough fuel but we were so lucky to finish the race and finished overall 18th and 11th in our class. The last 2 laps were so slow there was no wind blowing in to the car and I was feeling very dizzy. As I don’t take any liquids while driving and being in the car for almost 1 hour and 45 minutes it was really hard. After the race when I got down from the car I could hardly walk. Luckily Peter came running and gave me a bottle of cool water. It took about a hour for me to recover.

Any way we had a great race and as a team this was our first 24 hour race and I think every one did a great job. To finish a 24 hour race is a big achievement. I think if we didn’t have the problems with the car we would have finished very high. We ran the whole race without the 2nd gear to have less weight for the gear box. I have done almost 10, 24 hour races and I should say this was the best because it was our own team and every member felt like at home.. We will be doing this next year and hope fully to do better.