Drivers Blog // Harris Irfan // Labrador on magic mushrooms

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Like you’ve just fed the Labrador on magic mushrooms and sent him out on the ice rink for a laugh. That’s how this car feels.

It’s early morning practice at round 3 of the UAE GT Championship, and the orange TNT-liveried Porsche 996 Cup is understeering and oversteering everywhere. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that at least the front and rear are doing this in equal measure, so perhaps the chassis is actually set up just fine. The tyres are certainly not fine, and I’ve no wish to continue this practice session.

Paul’s strong preference for the National Circuit configuration at the Dubai Autodrome means he will do quali on fresh tyres. He brings it home in P7 after just two flying laps and despite our lowest ever qualifying position, he is strangely undisturbed. It’s very tight in GTC class – the top seven cars are separated by 1.3 seconds. Poor Simmo in the Motorsport Wheels Porsche 997 Cup has not even set a qualifying time – his guest driver Phil Quaife had a blow out on turn 7 where the GTB class car is now parked up, so they will be starting from the back of the grid which will make for an entertaining race as they carve their way through the GTC pack.

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Our lowly grid position means the start will be even more critical than usual. We know we’ll have more traction off the line than the GTC Ginettas, and I’m pretty sure I can trouble the Maseratis going into turn 1, particularly in the knowledge that Robert Cregan will have the previous race’s melee weighing heavily on his mind.

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As always, I will run the first stint. Strap up and await the pit siren to signal grid formation. A last minute pep talk from Paul: stay with Cregan and allow him to punch a hole through the pack in front. Grunt and traction will give us the advantage over the Ginettas. If all goes smoothly, I ought to be in the top three by the first turn. Turns 7 and 8 will be key to getting past the smaller cars: from the inside line, allow the Porsche to drift outwards from the apex, which should make the Lotuses and X-Bows think twice before engaging in a dogfight.

The siren wails. “Bring me back some tyres,” quips Paul before slamming the door shut, and I fire up the engine.

Straight out of the pit lane into the warm-up lap, I tip the car into turn 1 and promptly spin. What the hell…?

Thankfully, only a couple of my rivals spot me pirouetting off the circuit in an embarrassing lapse of concentration. “When in a spin, both feet in” is the mantra, and I keep the engine ticking over, turn back onto the circuit and get going again. Something is not quite right – the engine cuts out as I enter the uphill bowl after the Club link, and I coast to a standstill in front of the spectator guard rail at the top of the bowl. For a few frantic seconds, I push and pull as many buttons and switches as I can, before I realise that the ignition cut off just needs to be reset. Curiouser and curiouser.

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Lined up on the grid as we await the 5 minute board, I sheepishly admit my stupidity to Alex, and he suggests that sometimes the ECU can do funny things after a spin hence probably why the ignition cut out. No problem – we’re back on the grid and good to go.

You know the sequence by now. Lights out, hammer down.

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At first, the start is superb. I get the jump on the second Maserati lined up alongside me and I’m sticking to the tail of Cregan’s leading Maserati who is thoughtfully ploughing a Maserati-sized furrow ahead. I’m past the insectoid black KTM X-Bow and both Ginettas. Yee, and indeed, har.

Then nothing. Nada. Rien. The ignition is dead, and my dashboard lights up like Eid decorations in Satwa.

Cars begin streaming past me left and right and I coast to a near stop in the braking zone of turn 1, just as the final car (the Khaleeji Motorsport Ferrari F430) passes. I am P19 at the first turn. Lord, your humble servant is once again grateful for this opportunity to be tested.

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Frantic stabs of the cut-off switch get the car going again, and I’m back on the tail of the Gulf blue Ferrari. Most of the first lap is spent trying to catch up with the Ferrari, losing power under acceleration as the ignition cuts, resetting the cut-out switch, then catching up again. I steer most of the first lap one-handed, pumping the switch as if cadence braking with my thumb. This is insane.

The pit entry is at the next turn – I need to make a decision. Hope that one final monumental stab of the button keeps it in situ (perhaps it’s just a dodgy switch?) or pull in to the pits, and get the pit crew to check it out? I’ve lost radio contact, so there’s no sense in trying to explain it to Alex now – I’ll have to mime and shout through my helmet to explain the problem when I roll in, but will they understand me? Will they be able to do anything about it? Probably not. The sensible thing to do is hit the button with all my might, and hope that it doesn’t work itself loose under acceleration. So I do. And it doesn’t. Thank God.

Let’s go hunting.

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Ferrari first – easy peasy. One by one I reel in the back of the grid. Renault Megane – tick. Aston number 2 – tick. The leading AUH Aston proves a lot trickier, but that too is dispatched. The second Maserati – tick. Crank & Piston’s very own Phil McGovern will be doing the second stint in this car, and he managed to find impressive qualifying pace earlier in the day, but first out is David Field gifting me a satisfying overtake. It’s always good to get one over the Gulfsport cars…

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Second KTM – tick. Up ahead, the second Gulfsport Ginetta has a transmission problem (which eventually proves terminal) – tick by default, though I will only discover this later.

This is like Playstation. Are you watching this, Barry? Your boys are going down today…

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Now for the Lotuses and the leading KTMs: hmm, getting a bit tougher now. These lightweight purpose built GT4 racers are perfect for the technical nature of the 3.56km National Circuit. The heavier cars will struggle over the course of one hour, as the tyres begin to degrade on this punishing configuration of the Autodrome, but in theory the lightweight specials should have an inherent advantage. If I can find the balance between pace and smoothness, ensuring that I’m quick enough to challenge them for position but consistent enough to preserve the car for Paul’s stint, that will be the best I can hope for.

Here goes then: aim to stay with them through the tighter bits like the Club link slalom, and get a run out of turn 16 onto the main straight.
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It works, though it takes a while to get the perfect slipstream, then make myself big through turn 1 so they are not tempted to repass. Lotus 2-Eleven, Lotus 2-Eleven, and the insectoid X-Bow, all picked off.

Now for the big boys: Cregan, Ghanem (in the Gulfsport Ginetta) and ace racer Jordan Grogor in the leading KTM (guest driving for Saad Salman’s Sayel Racing team) are still too far to challenge, but every now and then, I catch a glimpse in the distance. As they scrap each other for position, I can only benefit, though the back-marking Khaleeji Ferrari makes it difficult for me to pass a second time and I lose a couple of critical seconds, forcing my way past him. I let John Sinders have a friendly rub through the bowl, just to let him know I’m there, though I do wish the marshals had been displaying blue flags to signify a quicker car coming through. Still, rubbing is racing!

I’m P4 in class at the pit window, which is not bad at all given the circumstances, and we can still challenge for a podium spot. As we swap, I warn Paul about the cut-off switch and advise him on the finer aspects of electrical circuit theory – should the ignition cut out again, he is to swing hard at the dashboard.

This time round, I’ve left the tyres in decent shape, and Paul finds pace from the get go. Although we are initially P4 at the pitstop, the leading pack are a good way ahead. Slowly but surely, Paul reels in Saad Salman’s third placed KTM at a scarcely believable 2 to 4 seconds a lap. We’re actually going to do this.

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Alas, despite eventually overhauling the KTM, Paul is required to come in for a pit stop infringement. It appears we spent 0.2 seconds too short a time in the pit lane. Sounds familiar, right? Cursing into his helmet as he drives through the pit lane at 60kph, he has just spent the last lap racking his brain, trying to recall what curb he might have jumped to have merited the penalty.

The considerable additional time cost has put us back into P4, and despite a typically gritty fight back from Paul in the dying laps, we finish just 1.2 seconds behind Saad. One more lap is all we needed to take that spot, but it is not to be: in the dying minutes, a dive down the inside at turn 5 that Paul describes as “less than intelligent” by the visiting driver in the GTB Corvette causes the orange Porsche to take avoiding action off the circuit, and ruins momentum for a last ditch overtake on the KTM in front.

Paul is furious – nothing was to be gained from this pointless action by the Corvette, but that has been symptomatic of our day. There’s also no point boiling blood over the 0.2 second pit infringement. Rules is rules, say I. Let’s just make sure our car is reliable and well set up for the next race, and that we continue to drive in the manner we do. At least in this last respect, Paul is pleased that we are complementary pairing.

Strangely, I must say that I am perversely satisfied with a P4, as despite our horrendous first lap, we showed character and determination to haul our way through the grid. Paul, too, feels that the result could have been very different with slightly better luck.

“We were running at the same pace for the entire race,” he observes. “In fact the fastest lap was set in the last lap, meaning we achieved a near perfect race setup. We also both ran consistent lap times between the two of us.” For endurance racing, this is a significant benefit: two consistently quick drivers will have more strategic options than one fast and one slow driver.
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Congrats to Sayel Racing on their first podium. As for Gulfsport’s Cregan: he did it again. Is there any way we will catch him this season?

A final few thoughts now, for those of you who have borne with me through this random stream of consciousness. As you all know, the racing community is mourning the loss of bike champion Pascal Grosjean, and we await news on fellow competitor Tony Jordan.

As I mentioned a couple of columns back, I am very much in two minds as to whether I want to encourage my own children to take up this sport, and whether indeed I myself think it is morally right to deliberately put myself in harm’s way. “Motorsport is dangerous” screams the back of the pit pass draped around my neck. No shit, Sherlock.

Although my family turned up en masse to watch me at the last round, and indeed (for the most part) thoroughly enjoyed themselves, my mother was quite visibly disturbed by the spectacle of testosterone-fuelled males noisily hurtling towards each other in flimsy pieces of metal for an hour.

Her knowledge of motorsport is fairly limited, to put it politely. When the GT cars weaved in single file down the main straight under a Code 60 last time out, she assumed that was the race. When the green flag dropped for the restart, she practically passed out with fear. She spent much of the race in the suite above the pits whispering silent prayers and refusing to watch. I wonder what the rest of the spectators’ gallery thought of this lady cloaked up like an Afghani villager in the corner of the room, murmuring her way through prayer beads.

“I didn’t enjoy myself until I saw you exit the car at the pit stop and saw your friend jump in,” she confessed afterwards. Then she checked herself and remorsefully reflected on this comment. “The poor thing is somebody else’s boy as well, how must his mother feel.”

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Like all racers, Paul is big enough and ugly enough not to dwell on ifs and buts, and his view is very much that the thrill of racing is too strong a draw: “Better than dying old and regretting all the things you didn’t do because you were scared to get hurt.” Perhaps back home in the UK, Mrs Denby senior is also saying a silent prayer every race Friday.

“Man is selfish,” concluded my mother with a resigned sigh that day, after I had respectfully declined her umpteenth request to call time on my racing days. And indeed, he is, though we often refuse to see it that way.

To all the racers out there – stay safe chaps, and call your Mum at the weekend.

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Farewell, Pascal, and God speed for a full recovery, Tony.