Round 4 - Race Report

Gulf ProCar 2023/24 Round 4 at Yas Marina Circuit

Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi. Saturday 6 January 2024.

After a three week break the first weekend after New Year, Gulf ProCar was into the fourth round of the 2023/24 season. After two race weekends at Dubai Autodrome the racing community was back at the season opener venue, Yas Marina Circuit and this time on the shorter North track lay-out which offered different types of challenges for the competitors.

In qualifying some drivers had times deleted for track limit infringements but when everything was settled the usual front runners were leading the pack.

In Class 2 it was a fight between Dragon Racing stable mates Khaled Al Marzouq  and Masoud Jaberian both with their potent Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo. Typical for this class is that due to several commitments the drivers are not able to race the full season so they don’t meet at each round. Khaled won the opening round at Yas whilst Masoud was victorious in round 2 at Dubai Autodrome. Both competitors are rather new in racing but their desire and ambitions became again obvious taking nothing for granted and pushing each other to the limit. Khaled was dominant in free practice, qualifying and also his race pace was immaculate resulting in a clean sweep for race 1. Race 2 looked to turn out to be a similar scenario but Khaled jeopardise his chances for victory with a blend line infringement leaving the pitlane to join the start grid resulting in a three-place penalty but this didn’t hamper his ambitions and went full out. His penalty handed victory to Masoud getting a nice reward for all the hard work he put in the whole weekend.

Class 3 was a head-to-head competition between two drivers into their first season of GT4 racing with on one side Keith Gatehouse racing the Mercedes AMG GT4 in GPM Racing colours and run by Dragon Racing and on the other side Greystone GT entry Ryan Jurgensen in the McLaren 570S.

Both drivers have a different approach to the season but with the same goal and that is to gain as much experience as possible; and collecting results to obtain on a relative short time an international license. Dubai based Keith was one of the first drivers to confirm his entry for the full Gul ProCar season and his consistency is paying off by not only leading his class but also heading the overall Gulf ProCar championship. Ryan joined later in the season and uses Gulf ProCar as a stepping stone to an international career. For him this winter series offers a lot of testing opportunities which helps him with the preparation for upcoming summer plans.

During the whole weekend the Mercedes driver had the upper hand whilst the McLaren driver is closing in on his American compatriot.

Class 4 is a typical battle between Toyota GT86 drivers with cars entered by Rowe Oil Trackdays for Ahmed Al Khaja and Aiman Sadat, who is a late season entry joining the series only at the previous round. For them competition came from regular entry Avik Anwar racing with his own DNA Racing Team. In that mix was also the RKC - Autotech entered Honda EP3 for Krishna Redy Pasil and for this occasion he shared the car with team owner Ricky Coomber.

Ricky had a new car lined up for himself but a delay in delivering parts meant that his entry is delayed till next round. The Honda in the hands of this experienced driver proved to be good competition when  Coomber after claiming pole position also took top honours for race 1. Avik Anwar had to abandon his car mid race causing a lengthy safety car period. But focus in this class was the battle between Ahmed Al Khaja and Aiman Sadat which ended in favour of Aiman.

For race 2 Krishna couldn’t repeat the performance of Ricky Coomber but still ended on the podium. Avik got the permission to race his spare car and took home second place. Again, we had a race long fierce battle between the stable mates Ahmed and Aiman even resulting in both cars spinning after light contact. Aiman was the first one able to continue whilst Ahmed feared for too much damage to his car and decided to abandon the race.

Next round of Gulf ProCar is in two weeks’ time again at Yas Marina Circuit but this time of the GP Track.