UAE Touring Car Championship (Rounds 7&8)

Race Day 4

16^th March saw round 4 of the UAE Touring Car Championship being held at the Dubai Autodrome. For this round, Jonathan was away so Umair was “flying solo” for the day. The day followed the usual format, warm-up, 20 minute sprint race and a 1 hour endurance event.

Qualifying saw Umair put Ronda V2.0 on pole position and race 1 promptly disappeared up the track at and was over 8 seconds ahead of our closest competitor (Willie Morrison) when the teams great friend Jon Simmonds gorgeous BMW E30 unfortunately blew its engine. Umair just clipped the oil with a rear wheel which resulted in the car spinning which allowed Willie to slip past into P1. With the last 5 minutes of the race being completed under Code 60, Umair never had the opportunity to try and take the win. So we had to settle for 2^nd place.

Race 2 saw Umair again disappear into the distance from the start. Umair was called into for the mandatory pit stop with a lead over 30-secs. However disaster struck when Umair went to restart the car as it wouldn’t start. Sander was soon on the case and despite time lost, soon had Rhonda back-up and running (There was an electrical glitch with the fuel pump). With that Umair set out to finish the race as the 3^rd place finish in the team championship could prove vital at the end of the season.

So despite being the quickest class 2 car the team finished with a 2^nd and 3^rd place finish. Not the results the team hoped for, but it could have been worse. For the next round the team were going to make some set-up changes as Rhonda still wasn’t handling like she should.

To show how “committed” some people are, Jason insisted he dropped round for a bit…