Dubai // That deafening engine roar… that horribly shrill, whizzing sound… it stays with you for a long time.
You know it is going to be loud inside that glitzy (at least from the outside) Al Nabooda Racing’s Porsche GT3 Cup car, but nothing can really prepare you for it, especially not that lull before the proverbial storm.
Zaid Ashkanani, the Kuwaiti who is going to be steering this powerful beast, is calmly preparing himself for the laps, stretching his arms and neck muscles, while the engineer checks the tyres and other gizmos lining the skeletal and very un-Porsche-like insides of the car.
Next, he fills up the fuels tanks, but not many of us are really paying attention.
We are busy filling up our own tanks, as the snacks and juices make the rounds.
Al Nabooda Racing’s media day has attracted more than a few of us to the Dubai Autodrome.
The calm, however, is shattered as Ashkanani, who has flown in from Kuwait in the morning for the media day, switches on the engines.
The Al Nabooda Racing Porsche GT3 Cup car – a new standard race vehicle based on the 911 GT3 – becomes the centre of attraction once again.
The cameras start clicking away. A few others, like me, bring out their trusty mobile phones to record the moment and, of course, to flaunt it later on Facebook, Instagram and what have you.
The car has a 3.8-litre and 460-horsepower engine under the bonnet, but it only seems to be purring as Ashkanani takes it out for a couple of test laps before getting members of the media, myself included, into the passenger seat.
No big deal, you think, as I put on the helmet. But then comes the first challenge. And the car is not even moving yet.
Trying to squeeze myself into the passenger seat was not as easy as it looked. But then, I am an Oldsmobile now, and this is a Porsche 911.
The engineer kindly buckles me and then Ashkanani gives me the thumbs up. I nod back.
Let it rip baby!
But, to my disappointment, he just crawls through the pit lane.
I have seen a few crazies drive faster in parking lots.
What the… I mumble under my breath. Ashkanani probably heard that. But I was told he cannot hear even if I tried screaming into his ears.
The 21-year-old Kuwaiti, who is third in this year’s Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East driver’s championship with his Al Nabooda Racing teammate Jeffrey Schmidt at the top, just clicked a few button-like things and lo!
In an instant I had turned deaf and I realised why they had warned Ashkanani would not hear a thing. I checked the speedometer and, in a wink, it had shot from around 100kmph to 260-270kmph. A second later, it was back in the low 100s as the driver went wide for a sharp turn.
So there I was, tossing in my seat through the three laps, desperately trying to keep my mobile phone still and record the moment. And, of course, I was praying my vertigo stayed at bay.
Thankfully, the vertigo did not make what could potentially have been an embarrassing visit, but it still took more than a couple of hours to get out of that drive-induced daze.
The ears took a bit longer before they could start hearing at normal levels again.
arizvi@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport
