Al Harthy First Middle Eastern Driver to score championship points in Formula Renault BARC UK

Oulton Park: Oman Racing Team’s Formula driver Ahmad Said Al-Harthy who is sponsored by The Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Sports, Bank Muscat and Oman Mobile finished 5th from a grid of 33 cars this weekend at the Formula Renault BARC Championship in the United Kingdom.

Ahmad left this weekend to the UK to take part in the forth round of the championship which was hosted at the Oulton Park circuit. Preparations started on Friday which saw all the drivers complete a minimal amount of laps due to heavy rains and incidents on the track.

Saturdays schedule started at 10am in the morning which saw a 20 minute qualifying session which was held under wet conditions, the first for this season. “We were expecting it to rain for the qualifying session, and the team did a great job to get the car ready for a wet setup, since I have never qualified in wet conditions we were all slightly nervous about how competitive I was going to be”, mentioned Ahmad.

To the surprise of everyone it soon became clear that Oman Racing Team driver was way above par, and was competing within the top ten, which was a first for both the driver and his team. As conditions started getting better Ahmad was able to qualify in impressive 7th on the grid with a time of 1min 30.315 sec with an average speed of 144.13 km/h on a 3.616 km track layout, 0.8 seconds away from pole position driver Aaron Steele.

As always it was the Formula Renault BARC championship that was the highlight of the race weekend, with Ahmad starting at 7th on the grid his highest qualifying position of the season, excitement was at its highest in the Omani’s team garage.

The 14 lap race started with dry track conditions, which was a lot quicker compared to the wet track earlier in the morning. Al Harthy had an average start and was able to pull back his position coming out of the first two corners. Ahmad was racing wheel to wheel with the best drivers in the championship, and midway through the 14 lap race was able to work his way to the best finish of his 2007 season finishing 5th out of 33 starters.

“I am very happy with my results, the wet qualifying session was very tough specially with the track being very slippery, but I was excited to start within the top ten, and to finish the race within the top 5 is just unbelievable. I have been waiting to score my first championship point and to come out of this weekends race with 6 points is marvelous. I also want to thank The Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Sports, Bank Muscat and Oman Mobile for their trust in me”, a jubilant Al Harthy remarked.