I was asked at the weekend if national motor racing had taken a nose dive along with the economy. Although this might have seemed like a reasonable assumption, having spent 24 of the past 48 days working at a race track, it certainly didn't feel like it to me.
In fact it is quite common for grids to decrease in size over the season for a number of reasons. Firstly, race budgets get expended earlier than planned and secondly, championships get won before the end of the season thus taking away the incentive for some to race. This is the reason some organisers offer the incentive of double points for the last race of the season.
The Dubai Speed Weekend, held on April 15 and 16, brought season six of our national racing scene to a close and featured the last four rounds of the Middle East Porsche GT3 Cup. This produced a new and very worthy champion in Sheikh Salman bin Rashid al Khalifa, who had battled with Prince Abdulaziz al Faisal throughout the season. Teenager Fahad Al Gosaibi ended the season in a very respectable third place overall.
We also were treated to an epic battle between the current UAE Sportbike 1000 class champion, Abdulaziz Binladin, on his BMW S1000RR and British Superbike ace Scott Smart, son of Barry Sheene's brother-in-law Paul Smart. In the 600 class, there was victory for the Triumph Daytona-mounted Mahmoud Tannir, whose team has backing from Yas Marina Circuit, as he took on the new 600 champion, Jason Burnside (Mapei Honda).
So, no shortage of excitement there, then. But we also witnessed some great battles in the last round of the very popular Total-sponsored UAE Touring Car Championship, admittedly without Class 1 champion Khalid Bin Hadher and a few of the other regulars.
The UAE Sportscar Championship had been wrapped up in March with Jordan Grogor taking the title, as had the spectacular UAE GT Championship, which presented spectators with an amazing array of cars including Maserati, Porsche, Aston Martin, Lotus, Callaway Corvette, Dodge Viper and Ginetta running in three classes. The three class champions were Karim Al Azhari (GTA), Jon Simmons (GTB) and Joe Ghanem (GTC).
The Dubai Speed Weekend also demonstrated that one-make, "arrive and drive" racing offers competitors a cost-effective alternative to the potentially technically challenging multi-marque Touring and GT series with a great showing by the Suzuki Swift Cup and Formula Gulf 1000.
So despite some economic difficulties, there appears to be no shortage of interest in national racing and, what's more, we are now seeing new drivers coming from the various national karting championships. I think this bodes very well for the local racing scene and I am sure that when the 2011/12 season kicks off in October we will see bigger grids and some new championships.
Barry Hope is a director of GulfSport Racing, which is hoping to produce the first Arab F1 driver through the FG1000 race series. Join the UAE racing community online at www.singleseaterblog.com
