Cool Track Cars at the Dubai Autodrome

The United Arab Emirates may be small in size, but the local passion for performance is strong. On any given Friday, from October to April, you'll find some serious track day addicts down at the Dubai Autodrome, attacking the track in a wide range of fettled and focused 'production' racecars - all doing battle in the name of glory throughout the UAE Touring Car Championship. Here's a round-up of some of the sweet circuit stuff.

At the top of the blog you can see one of the more famous UAE Touring Car campaigners, the gold 'n' delicious Honda Integra DC2. Built for the right reasonable price, but tuned with the right parts in the right places, this car had the corner grip and braking strength before it had wild hikes in horsepower. Engine work to that legendary VTEC followed, but not before there was balance and drivability. And that's why this car always shows strong. More proof, if you needed it, that Japanese cars were born to race. Note the heavily-vented carbon bonnet, homemade carbon front splitter and miss-matched wing mirrors - she's seen some rubbin' during her racing!

Another Jap classic amongst the racers is this Mitsubishi EVO VI, which regularly hassles the rear bumper of the more expensive Porsche, Corvette and Viper entries, thanks mainly to the maximum exploitation of those great EVO traits - namely, get the power strong, reliable and tractable, and let that stonking chassis do its thing. Check the huge intercooler, cold air intakes everywhere and that distinctly appealing widened track under flared arches. Sounds pure EVO-evil on the move, too.
Stepping sweetly into the new school side of things is this SEAT Leon Cupra. It's just a small step away, in terms of spec, from the real-deal European Touring Car machines, and its pedigree shows out on the track where it's consistently near the top of the table. Undeniable proof that light-weight, chassis grip and braking composure maketh the racecar - brute power won't always win. The Loen looks just killer in race trim - surely inspiration for a road car style-up?

It's always a pleasure to see a tidy Beemer out on the track. These Bavarian beauties just exude pure motor racing class, even if, like this E46 M3 CSL, they are simply road cars with a cheeky sprinkling of factory-added circuit bits. But what lovely bits the factory have sprinkled - light-weight BBS alloys with a seductive deep-dish, carbon panels including the entire roof, and a general performance enhancing diet plan that really gets the most from that lusty 360bhp, straight-6 motor under the hood. Not cheap, but too trick; the CSL just rocks right outta the box.

You may already have noticed that there is indeed a few quid (or Dirhams as we call them in these parts) knocking around the racetracks in this region, and as such you will see some true motorsport thoroughbreds smokin' the tarmac - just like this Porsche 911 GT3 RS. If you've got the cash and you don't want to build it and tune it yourself, then the GT3 RS is one of the daddies of out-of-the-box racing. Money can buy you happiness!

Just as pretty but in a more nostalgic style, and right on the other end of the money and maintenance scale, is this Porsche 944 S2, looking too tough in dark grey paint over track-tweaked factory S2 bodywork. This car posts regular mid-table results, right on the tails of some of the much bigger budget cars, thanks again to the cunning allocation of cash. The 2.9-litre, 4-cylinder motor remains untouched; for this driver it's all about stopping and steering, with upgrades to the brakes and suspension. And this Porker definitely goes round the bends. And all the time rolling in serious style on stunning Enkei rims.

RubberDuck Magazine's own Jon Saxon has some big love for these little cars, the Caterham Super 7. This pocket rocket represents British sportscar making at its very best, with years of experience poured into these reasonable-budget-racers to make them almost untouchable on the track. The grip is stunning and the brakes can stretch your neck, again it's not all about brute force - although at 260bhp these CSRs ain't exactly shy. In the right hands Caterhams will go around the outside of pretty much anything... in Jon's hands they usually end up backwards in a hedge! (Sorry mate!). Full cage, exposed aluminum bodywork and dark grey rims keep this Super 7 CSR nicely on the mean side of nasty.

We're hangin' with the big boys now. These are the pure muscle monsters that constantly rattle the scenery and hog the podium positions, down at the Dubai Autodrome. At 8.4-litres, the Dodge Viper V10 is easily the biggest block on the block, dwarfing even the rather immense 7-litre V8 lurking up front in the Corvette Z06. With open exhausts and full GT race-specs these cars really do sound like the end of the world!

Awesome Audis

I've been over to Spain to drive the new Audi R8 V10, and as you can imagine, 500+bhp from a yowling V10 and over 300kph, all wrapped-up in that slick 'n' sliding, carbon-encrusted supercar shape is about as much fun as you can have without back seats! A truely stunning car from every angle and you can read the full road-test in the May edition of RubberDuck Magazine. While you're waiting you can check out these blog shots I snapped on RubberDuck's new Cannon video camera. It's a neat little box of tricks and shoots us some great vids with great sound. It also takes pictures, and thanks to its 'long' lens and video-biased recording, the shots come out a little different to the stuff I usually shoot on my Nikon D70 SLR. The sun always flares and everything has a really hard edge to it. I kinda like it.

Now that's what I call a mouth-watering sight - a big rack of fresh and juicy R8 V10s all lined-up at the Ascari racetrack, ready for a sound thrashing. Ascari is a beautiful little spot tucked away in the countryside outside Marbella, owned by a rich chap who just loves his motors. I could've stayed there all day, but security were having none of it.

Adding to my excitiment like a huge birthday cake with a girl inside was a liberal sprinkling of special Audi racers, including this R8 LMS. The extra aggression injected along with its racing pedigree makes this the ultimate bad-boy R8. Black O.Z rims, carbon fibre spiltters, mirrors and rear spoiler all shave the weight, and double the drool factor.

Audi's Le Mans racer, Tom Kristensen, was also knocking around with his own slightly boy-d-up R8, featuring some big stickers, bucket seats, a roll cage, air jacks, slick tyres over O.Z rims, and a cheeky nip of a rear spoiler - other than that it was factory stock. The plan was to dish out some hot passenger laps, but the car developed a sickly gearbox and skulked off for an early bath.

And, as luck would have it, it turned out that there was a girl in the huge birthday cake. Her name was Manila and she looked cool in pictures.

Mad to the Max

The V8 Interceptor and Pusuit Specials as driven by the cops in Mad Max are pure rat-rod aggression with huge blown engines, deep-dished slot mag wheels and gorgeous 80's paint jobs. And in Max Mad II, Max's own car, the V8 Interceptor, gets its hell-and-back matt black paint job, big-barrel external fuel tanks and tatty, toughened bodywork. Life is tough on the apocolypic highways of this petrol-starved future, and its Max's V8 that rules the evil roost.

These original European moive posters are simply the bomb, and I'm going to spend the rest of this sunny Dubai day sniffing around the internet to see what else I can find from the land of wicked movie artwork...

Desert Stormers 3 - The Video Nasties!

It's all about getting you lovely RubberDuck Magazine readers the very wildest in video action, so here I am getting way too up close and personal with this 14-litre, nitro-guzzling, supercharged V8 'Jeep' down on the start line, as the pit crew fires her up ready to race. As the mighty engine catches I get sprayed in the face with toxic over-fuel from the exhausts and my innocent eardrums blasted like never before. It looks like I'm moving back to get a nice, full-frame shot of this wicked racer, but I'm actually just trying to salvage at least some of my hearing. This is savage V8 power in full-on effect! This is the sand-drag-racing madness of the Liwa Festival, here in the UAE.



This is how it's done, boys 'n' girls - 300-metres up a 50-degree incline in deep, soft sand. This near perfect run from this blue-belter, short wheelbase Nissan Patrol took a smidge under 10-seconds, thanks to plenty of power and plenty of skill. Keeping this bucking beast in a straight line as the big turbo power thumps in is tougher than it looks - sand isn't exactly a predictable drag racing surface! This Patrol runs in the 'modified class' that sits just below the ultra-aggressive 'V8' class. The original straight-6 Patrol engine configuration must remain, but you can hang a turbo of two off the side for extra kick. One of the pit guys told me that the cars run the biggest turbos money can buy and that if they are lucky enough to make it to the top without a big bang then it's happy days! These 1500bhp engines burn bright and fast.



Making that sub 10-second turbocharged straight-6 sound like a peppy little lawnmower is this big daddy, 3000bhp, 14-litre V8. Running huge capacities and gallons of laughing gas, these top class racers hit the top of the dune in the late 8s or early 9s. Nothing rips up the hill quicker...



Next up is this matt-black menace to society. The pilot makes a rippin' start, but right from the off he just can't keep it in a straight line. Showing no fear (and no regard for the markers) he keeps his foot firmly floored and still makes it to the top in good time.



And saving the best until last - this RubberDuck Super-Movie has it all: jets of purging nitrous, thunderous revs, massive rooster-tails on take-off... and a near nuclear explosion as that big-dollar engine lets go in sky-lighting style! Just the maddest, loudest, wildest racing I've seen anywhere in the world. Love it!

Desert Stormers 2 - The Other Cool Stuff...

The Liwa Festival, UAE, isn't just about the monster sand-draggers up-hill-hooning. Horsepower fans from all over the GCC turn up to this once-a-year big-bhp-blowout to witness the dune-based-barnstorming and they bring all kinds of wicked rides with them to show off. Check out the pics...

This bad 'n' black VW Beetle dune buggy wasn't even at the gig, it was just sitting on a trailer some miles out - I guess it was a couple of thousand horsepower short of the big boys and didn't dare show its bug-eye'd face!

Next up is this short wheelbase Nissan Patrol with desert-spec high-clearence bumpers and diddy little, but most honourable, Gram Lights Japanese rims wrapped in balloning sand rubber. She's ready for action in the soft stuff, but those wobbly ol' tyres are truly terrible on the tarmac.

It's back to the old skool with this long wheelbase 80's Patrol, the 4x4 that started all this wild and dirty desert action. This one's been treated to a lime green paint job, a suspension slam and a set of sweet Japanese 6-spoke rims.

Those with a few quid in their pockets like to show off their toys and this delicious dune-basher would make any kiddie smile at Christmas time. Fast as hell in the real world, but up against the real racers its just a pussycat with an engine in the back.

This chap looks fairly happy with life, just after rolling his used-to-be-very-tidy 'classic' Patrol all the way down a very big dune. He just shrugged and said 'that's racing...'

Even the cops keep it real at the Moreeb Dune, rolling in this oldtimer Toyota Land Cruiser. I'm not really sure exactly where the blue and black camo will work, mind?

Quad bikes ruled the pit area with swarms of 'em all pretty much on the back wheels, and all 'thrapping' it up with wide open exhausts - Yoshimura on this one.

Night falls, the BBQs are lit and the hadrcore racing gets going, all under floodlights. But there's still time to bust out the dune buggy and cruise the dunes.

Last but by no means least is this bright red blast from the past Chevy truck. Don't know what model it is or what year it was made, but its pretty darn old and pretty darn cool. Check out all this good stuff and much more in my delicious digital monthly car magazine at www.rubberduckmag.com

Desert Stormers

I decided to head off deep into the sandy stuff, to the Liwa Festival, a few hundred klicks south of Abu Dhabi. Now, any UAE guidebook will tell you that danger lurks in the desert - take plenty of water with you, don’t stay out in the sun for too long, don't finger any scorpion-type thingies, yadda yadda. Well I’ve read a few of these so-called guidebooks, and absolutely nowhere was there any mention of these bonkers monster trucks that go around tearing up the side of sand dunes the size of mountains!

Some of them boosted to hell and back by the biggest turbos known to man, some of them packing nitrous-guzzling, 14-litre (!) V8 engines – some of them making over 3000bhp! I mean come on, if this isn’t danger in the desert, I don’t know what is? I know for a fact that I’d rather have a randy camel come after me than one of these super-psycho desert-draggers. Well I just about managed to get all you RubberDuck fans some truly killer video and pics of these mega-monsters in action, before I had to run off home and change my undies.

In the picture above you can see a few of them lined-up in the pits, huge turbos sprouting out of what would’ve been the bonnets, and what’s left of the early 80’s Nissan Patrol chrome front ends. Nearly all the racers use the old skool (and too cool) Patrols; it’s all about tradition with these boys, and it was with these ol' Nissans that the mental desert fun really started all those years ago. The big, straight-6 original Patrol engine was strong and tuneable, lapped up a bit of big-turbo-tuning, and it just kinda snowballed (fireballed?!) from there. The beasties pictured with the huge blowers on top of the blocks are from the ‘V8’ class, which is basically unlimited; all that must remain from the stock Patrol is the chassis and firewall – other than that you can go as crazy as cash will allow. That means full fibreglass bodywork, top fuel V8 engines and a seat to sit in. Job done.

Then the drivers rip and snort their way to the top of a 300-metre sand dune, with a climb angle of over 50-degrees. It’s hard enough to walk up the legendary Moreeb Dune (it means ‘scary mountain’), let alone pilot a 3000bhp rocket up the face of it. But hey, I guess that’s the fun.

I was right on the start line. This car, in the video below, makes a good start, but then halfway up there’s a fairly big explosion. Not to be put off, he rolls back down the dune and canes his still smouldering engine. The deafening thunder-crack and shooting flames nearly gave me a heart attack. Put that in your guidebook! Check out more at www.rubberduckmag.com