UAE GT Championship. Round 6. Drivers Diary

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Not to worry, though. At turn 1, he has gone exceptionally wide, wrestling with an unruly and skittish demon, before rejoining the track. Sensibly, he opts to pass the slower GTB cars on the back straight after the flick-flack, rather than attempt to thread the ridiculously wide Corvette through the pack on the tightest part of the circuit.

And so to the back straight – we’re starting to string out now. Paul’s Khaleeji Porsche 997 GT3 is stuck to my rear bumper and the other GTB cars look set to battle amongst themselves.

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1:49, 1:49, 1:49. Paul and I are banging out solid lap times consistently, a good 2 seconds a lap quicker than the rest of the field. For once, I am not feeling unduly pressured by him: some corners he is quicker (often under braking), and some I am quicker (often post apex as I put the power down), but on the whole, the difference between us is not significant enough to make passing an inevitability unless I make a very silly error.

And so the focus is on mental effort, metronomic consistency, rhythmic accuracy. By the time Alex radios Paul for his mandatory pitstop, the last 25 minutes have given me a slender but relatively stress free 2 second advantage. At the next lap, I’m in to the pits as well and pull up to see Paul pop his head out of the pit garage (having swapped with Sheikh Hasher) and in a sporting gesture, applauds my effort.

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Obviously this will turn out to be a curse of some kind. Alex stoops in towards my window net and asks if everything is OK with my engine. Sure it is, I respond, wondering if he can hear anything wrong from the pit wall, and think nothing of it.

The pit crew send me on my way, I glance at my wrist watch on the exit (don’t want a repeat of my previous infringement) and hurtle onto the track.

Something is wrong. Flamin’ Nora, why does this always happen to me? At first, the problem is imperceptible – a reluctance to pull cleanly above 7000 RPM. No matter, I tell myself, this may lose me a second a lap if I focus on carrying maximum momentum into the corners, and perhaps I can maintain my lead: certainly Sheikh Hasher is nowhere in my rear view as yet.

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But it’s no use. As the race drags into the last few minutes, my engine refuses to pull beyond 6000, and with a tortuously laboured lap time of 1:56, Sheikh Hasher has no trouble catching me, slipstreams me into the Zuhour Kink, then slingshots past as if I’m standing still.

Paul suspected something and no doubt informed Alex when he stopped. It seems when I jumped a kerb at speed, my oxygen sensor had dislodged itself and dragged its sorry self under my rear bumper just before he pulled in for a driver change. Since then the smug sod has been content to sit back and observe the inevitable.