Both qualifying and race saw dry conditions for the
first time this season; with Ahmad having tested previously
in similar conditions the team was hoping for a very
good performance from the Omani racer.
Qualifying took place in the morning session and
was scheduled for 20 minutes. Al Harthy progressed
very well in the session and quickly started posting
competitive times, traffic was also an issue and Ahmad
did his best to pass slower cars, eventually posting
a very good time of 1min 22.842 seconds putting him
8th on the grid for the afternoon race. “ Oulton
is always a difficult track in qualifying, it’s
very hard to find space on the track, but when I saw
my time on the pit-wall I knew I was competitive.
I was just 0.138 of a second away from James Dixon
(UK) who set a time of 1 min 22.704 seconds putting
him 2nd on the grid, this shows how close the top
ten are at Oulton Park”.
With qualifying now completed the team prepared Al
Harthy’s car for the afternoon race that was
scheduled for a 14-lap race. Al Harthy who secured
his highest finish of 2007 at the same track was in
a confident mood to secure a good result; and once
the starting lights went out Oman’s ace had
a blistering start quickly moving from 8th on the
grid all the way up to 4th into the first corner;
the excitement was short lived, there was an incident
on the track which caused the race to be red flagged
meaning the race had to be restarted. “ I had
an amazing start, the best start I ever had in Formula
Renault I think, I quickly passed the cars ahead and
realized I was all the way up in 4th, I was beginning
to challenge for 3rd but unfortunately I saw the red
flags and knew we had to restart the race. Once I
got the car back on the grid Dave my race engineer
from Hillspeed told me to concentrate and just repeat
that perfect start”.
On his out lap it soon appeared that there was a
mechanical fault with the front right tire, as it
seemed to the onlookers that Ahmad had suffered a
punctured tire, this was truly not what anyone expected,
Al Harthy managed to coast the car into the garages
to quickly change the tire, but with the team inspecting
the cause of the puncture it soon became clear that
Ahmad had to retire from the race as there was a fault
with the front right suspension. “ Mechanical
problems are always expected in motor racing, but
when things are going very well, as they were in the
beginning of the race it adds to the disappointment.
I initially thought that it was a puncture and managed
to bring the car back, but as we realized it was a
suspension issue”. Mentioned Al Harthy
Looking back on an event which initially promised
so much for the Omani driver, team principal Richard
Ollerenshaw said: “There’s no question
we had the pace, and the drivers, to potentially achieve
a double-podium finish – it’s disappointing
the way things turned out for Ahmad.
We are all really disappointed for Ahmad, his first
start was fantastic but then to have the suspension
problem was a bitter pill to swallow. We believe he
may have been tagged during the confusion of the first
start or somewhere out on track.”
