Azzam captured a double pole for round five of the WGA Supercars Middle East Championship, while Schmid won race one in the sixth and final meeting of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East.
Speed Weekend brings together the very best of regional motor racing. Action in both series continues Saturday (March 31) at “The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East”.
Ramez Azzam captured a superb double pole for the fifth round of the WGA Supercars Middle East Championship after leading a brilliant “1-2-3” for Batelco Racing Team in Friday’s qualifying.
The Batelco boys occupied the top of the timesheet for a majority of the 30-minute session. Frenchman Alban Varuttii initially moved up to first and then Mohammed Mattar took over for a brief period, before Azzam and Varuttii finally sealed the front row.
Azzam registered a fastest lap of two minutes 23.597 seconds to claim pole for race one (scheduled to start at 11am on Saturday). His second-quickest time in qualifying (2:23.778) also earned him the leading starting position for race two (1.55pm start).
Varuttii finished with a best mark that was 0.375 seconds off Azzam’s pace, while Mattar was third 0.588s slower. Both Varuttii and Mattar will also be starting race two behind their teammate.
“A double pole is great, but it’s as good as it gets when it’s a Batelco ‘1-2-3’ and I’m the one on top,” a visibly delighted Azzam said.
“We now have to do what we can to keep the lead and block out as many top positions as we can. I’ve never won a race starting from pole, so now I’m going to need to get my head sorted.
“It’s going to take some hard work. The car is great but the track is really slow right now and the conditions are not helping, so we’re going to have to do the best we can and hopefully things go our way in the end.”
Batelco have an opportunity to extend their 41-point lead in the Teams’ Championship standings should the same positions remain by the end of Saturday’s two races. That would put them in fine position to seal the title with only the final round of the season remaining, to be held in support of the 2012 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix from April 20 to 22.
“This is our first qualifying with our three cars in front, so it’s a fantastic result, but qualifying is totally different from a race,” Batelco Racing Team manager Osama Al Saad said. “It all depends now on our team and our preparations for tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes; hopefully, we can build a good gap from the people at the back.”
Raffii cousins Faisal of Alba Racing and Raed of VIVA Racing qualified behind the Batelco trio in fourth and fifth for race one. Alba’s Mustafa Al Khan was sixth and teammate Talal Al Gaith eighth, with VIVA’s Tarek Elgammal sandwiched between them in seventh.
Championship debutant Mohammed Al Baharna and former double champion Fahad Al Musalam qualified 10th and 11th, respectively. They are both racing for Speeding Saddles Team.
“It was pretty tough out there,” said Al Musalam, who is making a stunning comeback after a season-and-a-half away. “The car feels fine; it’s just a matter of fine-tuning everything and getting the maximum out of it.
“We’re trying to keep improving. During practice, we were off from the top by six seconds and then in qualifying, we’re off by four, so we were able to gain two seconds and we just have to continue closing that gap.
“It’s quite frustrating to see everyone else faster than you. Of course, they’ve been competing all season, but as a racer, you always want to win. Maybe we can do that something in race one, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Osama Abu Flasa, another driver making his series debut, qualified in first place in the SC06 category ahead of Nasser Al Alawi.
The WGA Supercars are being sponsored by Bahrain-based asset management company Western Gulf Advisory (WGA), and are being supported by tyre giants Pirelli.
Clemens Schmid began the final round of Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East in a perfect way on Friday.
From the beginning of the day, the Austrian was setting the pace, topping both practice and qualifying before winning race one in dominant fashion.
Schmid registered his pole-to-flag victory with a time of 25:32.344, nearly 10 seconds ahead of Saudi Arabia’s Bandar Alesayi who was the runner-up. Emirati Karim Al Azhari was third 14.210s from first.
Armin Schmid of Germany and Saeed Al Mouri of Saudi rounded out the top five.
While race winner Schmid also claimed first place amongst all participants in the series’ Gold category, Armin was the top man in the Silver. Turkey’s Cengiz Oguzhan claimed first in the Bronze class.