Friday 15 / November / 2024
Dubai: Ahmad Al Harthy will line-up on the fifth row of the GT class grid for his maiden race in the prestigious Asian Le Mans Series at Dubai Autodrome on Saturday, 13th February, after an unexpectedly hard-fought qualifying session at the United Arab Emirates track on Friday.
Making his debut in the championship this weekend in Dubai, where a pair of four-hour races will be contested, Oman’s Al Harthy and team-mates Jonny Adam and Tom Canning are eyeing a major push in race trim with their always immaculately prepared No.97 Aston Martin Vantage GT3.
Aston Martin factory driver Adam took qualifying duties on Friday morning, the session delivering the grids for both rounds one and two, and as the Oman Racing squad had predicted the impressive entry was very competitive indeed.
Lapping with the 10th fastest time of 1m 56.603 seconds to secure a top 10 starting slot in the GT class for round one, the Scottish driver delivered a second quickest lap of 1m56.835 seconds for the race two grid
Having worked hard to fine-tune the best possible race set-up throughout testing and free practice during the three days leading up to qualifying, where the team was third fastest on Wednesday, 10th February, hopes are justifiably high for today’s encounter.
Confident the Oman Racing Aston Martin will be much more competitive in race conditions than in qualifying, Al Harthy is relishing taking the start of round one and is determined to deliver one of his customary impressive performances.
“It’s a very tight and tough grid”, said the Oman Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, National Bank of Oman, Omantel and Barr Al Jissah supported driver, “Qualifying, to be honest, was how we expected it would be and we know we have a much more competitive race car – that’s what we’ve been working extremely hard on during the build-up to the weekend.
“I shall be starting both races this weekend and we’re looking forward to a clean start, clean race and gaining positions. I’m sure we can climb through and make up some good places. The standards are very high, as we expected from the Asian Le Mans Series, and I think we have a really good car but we’ll see how it works out for us. We’re positive, though, we should be very competitive.”
The long-awaited first round of the Asian Le Mans Series season will begin at 14.15 local time today, Saturday, 13th February, at Dubai Autodrome. Race two will follow on Sunday, 14th February, at 12.45 local time.
