Abdulaziz Turki AlFaisal. Enjoying The Off-Season

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“That night, we were having dinner and it started to snow really heavily. And everyone was shocked! We went to the driver’s briefing at 7.45am the next day and the organisers said free practice was going to be delayed until 10am. But the sun didn’t come out, and it was really icy. We knew the race was going to be cancelled but the [Schubert] team had already decided that they didn’t want to participate even if the race went ahead. Around lunchtime, the officials announced that the race was going to be cancelled. That was a shame but it was the right call.”

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This would be Abdulaziz’s last opportunity to get some seat time before beginning his Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East defence at Bahrain. It was, however, far from the biggest issue ATF faced during his off-season. While celebrating Ramadan, Abdulaziz was briefly admitted to hospital with severe pains in his abdomen, the calling card of a gall bladder infection.

Struck down at the last minute? Not quite…

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“The symptoms first came to me three years ago. I was on my way to Paris for a meeting, and as soon as I arrived, I just felt a lot of pain in my abdomen. From there I went to the hospital and they told me I had a stone in my gall bladder, so the doctor suggested taking it out. It’s a very simple procedure, but I was in Paris for only three days. So I said I’d do it when I got back to Saudi [Arabia] and take care of it with my doctor.”

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As it turns out, it would be another two and a half years before ATF finally had the errant stone removed. As the local lad explains to crankandpiston, he had a very good reason for the delay.

“I got back to Saudi, got busy, and forgot about it! After about a year and a half, I got the symptoms again. I went to the hospital, they diagnosed it again, I said I’d get in sorted, and then forgot about it again!

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“The pain came back at round five of VLN [again at the Nurburgring]. Then during Ramadan at 7am one morning, the pain woke me again, so I went to the hospital. They told me, because they’d done a lot of tests, that my liver enzymes were very high, so they kept me overnight to make sure everything was okay. At 11pm that same night, I was very nauseous and was vomiting a lot. It was suddenly a very serious issue, so my brother called the doctor. They decided that they had to operate right then.”