A neck-snapping crunch from behind and the clio was lifted and turned at the apex

We bought a Renaultsport Clio Cup. It’s a great little car, cost us $ 31,300 and it’s hard to modify to any great extent, which is a good thing. There are four other Clio Cup cars in the UAETCC series and it comes highly recommended - UAE GT front-runners Karim Al Azhari and Andrew Donaldson both approve.

Where’s the Volkswagen Golf GTI? We’ll race it one last time at the Yas Circuit, but in the meantime it’s in the For Sale sections of various magazines. Yes, we’re getting rid of it.

The new Clio is a real factory-built race car. You sit low and have to crane your neck upward to see any of the front panels. The dash and controls are all perfectly placed and purpose built. The six-speed sequential flat-shift box makes for great, linear acceleration.

The car has simply amazing grip levels, and is so well balanced under braking that it never leaves you wondering whether a spin is imminent encouraging you to push harder each lap. First time out, I never played with the brakes, which is also complete with dash read-out for front and rear bias.

A roof-mounted air intake is good for the driver in hot climates such as ours. There is no air-con in this race car, so Ala will just have to be happy with this forced convection when he drives the car. The faster you go, the cooler you get. It’s a good strategy in motorsport.

We have not yet acquired a full sponsorship deal, so I liveried the car with L+B DESIGN GROUP, Apex Circuit Design and The Polo Mint.com logos (all companies that I have a personal relationship with) to avoid it running as a complete white shell.

It was the usual hectic arrival at around midday: sign-on, fees, collect new race numbers, get tuition on controls and sequential gearbox and head out on track. All within 30 minutes. For the race, I qualify 16th out of a huge field of 34 cars - 1.5sec slower than the leading TAM/House of Portier Renaultsport Clio Cup, but felt that with 25-30kg of added driver weight, this was not such as bad result. With 12 laps in each of the UAETCC races, there seemed like plenty of time to make some moves on those ahead of me. My immediate plan was to catch and pass the identical Clio Cup of John Iossifidis. This would be the battle that those on the pit wall would be watching. I battled with John, each time a pass was attempted and was unsuccessful. In the end, it was about a car length in between us, with John able to hold me out. For Race 2, I started 16th and was determined to get ahead of both of the other Clios. After a good start, I was able to edge into Turn 1 with a long line of cars ahead, made up of the TAM/House of Portier Clio Cup, the Moutran’s Golf GTI and several Hondas. Slipping up the inside on Turn 11 as several cars ran wide, I found myself ahead of all these cars and put my head down to get a significant break. At turn 16, the last on the circuit, a neck-snapping crunch occurred from behind and the Clio Cup was lifted and turned at the apex of the corner. This shunt meant that all of those behind got a better run onto the straight and I was left several places further back. As a result the steering wheel was seriously off-centre when driving in a straight line and as I turned in I spun. Stalled on the outside of Turn One, I quickly reached for the ignition button. I was facing backwards and pretty much on the racing line as cars swerve to avoid me. The engine fires-up and I was back on my way. I carried on because I wanted to see whether the damage was detectable. As I crept back into pit lane, and into the garage, I dreaded my team-mate Ala’s reaction to the damaged car. I climbed out, looked around...no damage to the sides? I didn’t understand. Then, at the rear, the entire diffuser was hanging down and had been dragging on the track surface for all of the race.

So in the end we packed up, the transporter carrying away the car, leaving the repairs to DXB Racing before the next event.