Costas Papantonis was in fine form winning both races in the NGK Racing series as the 2015-16 race season got underway at Dubai Autodrome.
Papantonis, driving his Gulf Petrochem Seat Leon Super Copa, claimed successive Class 1 victories, winning both races with more than 30 seconds to spare ahead of Peter England in his Vauxhall Astra and Marcel Kusin who finished third on both occasions in his BMW 130i for K & K Racing.
“It was a relatively easy today with no issues with the car — a good weekend,” Papantonis said at the finish. “I want to thank my sponsors Gulf Petrochem, who have been alongside us for the last five years.”
Class 2 was a tighter affair, with Al Quassim Hamidaddin in a Honda Civic managing two wins in the Clio Cup, the race within a race, which saw Renault Cup Clio drivers Simon Dennis and Will Morrison traded places and each score a class win.
The UAE Sportbike Championship saw two veterans battling it out, with Mahmoud Tannir (Honda) taking the first race victory of the day and Abdulaziz Binladin (Kawasaki) striking back later on to secure race two.
“All in all it was a really good weekend for us and it was a great beginning for the championship,” Tannir said.
Frenchmen Lucovic Loffreda and Romain Lutter of Lucco Racing dominated the Radical Middle East Cup with a pair of wins on the day, but it was a scrappy affair between all of the drivers of the Le Mans style Radical race cars.
TEAM UAE PROGRESS AT ROTAX FINALS
Team UAE have six drivers in the final day of the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals after three qualifying heats in Portugal.
Luke Varley again led the way for the team, with a runner-up and two victories in the DD2 heats.
Sanad Al Rawahi was also in fine form in the DD2 class, finishing seventh, third and fourth in his three heats.
Piers Pakenham-Walsh recovered well from a below par qualifying session and his first heat where he finished 27th, to bounce back to 10th and 13th in his second and third heats to book a berth on the finals grid.
In the Max class, Tom Bale and Abdullah Al Rawahi were in the wars during their heats, but overcame the high attrition to achieve the target of making it to the final day.
Bale recovered from a heat 1 incident which relegated him to 17th, then dug deep to finish fifth in his second heat and ninth in his third heat.
Al Rawahi did enough with two seventh places in his first two heat races and survived being punted off in the third heat to finish tenth.
Taymour Kermanshahchi got off to a flying start in Race 1 of the Junior Max class powering to fourth place. He then stumbled in his second heat in which he ended 23rd, but made amends with a strong drive to finish sixth in his final heat and with it secure his place in the finals.
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