It’s hard to believe that before 2004, the Middle East had no permanent motorsport circuits. Today, 17 years later, venues in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and now Kuwait host a series of motorsport events, including Formula One, MotoGP, Formula E and international endurance racing.

2022 saw the very first international endurance motor race take place at the Kuwait Motor Town facility. The new circuit, situated in Arifjan 52km south of Kuwait City, was built incredibly in just 14 months. It was created under the auspices of the Amir of Kuwait, and is managed by the Royal Palace, with the aim of putting Kuwait on the world motorsport map. The first running of the Hankook 12H KUWAIT saw a Mercedes victory in the hands of CP Racing's Charles Putman, Charles Espenlaub, Joe Foster and Shane Lewis by two laps. 

The second running of the event may not prove as simple for the American team, as the 3.485 miles (5.609km), 20-turn circuit here in Kuwait can play a dramatic part, just as any of the other circuits we visit on the 24H SERIES calendar can. Of the track’s three long straights, two lead into heavy braking areas, while the other goes into a very fast left-hand kink that just urges you to carry more and more speed. Until you find yourself exploring the track limits, incurring the wrath of our race stewards.

Consequently, the Kuwait circuit offers many challenges for drivers and race engineers, asking for both maximised top end speed and incredible balance from the suspension set up through the many not-so-constant radius turns and undulations.

Race engineers are a strange breed in my experience, and I mean this with the utmost respect to the men and women on the pit perch. They are constantly thinking of ways to get their race car to handle better and invariably go faster for a quicker lap time. I have worked with quite a few race engineers over the years at various levels of our sport, and I remember many times having to break up the engineering debrief and push for that final 'set-up' sheet.

Real life racing is not quite the same as online sim racing where, with a few clicks here and there, all kinds of suspension set up variables can be explored. In real terms, suspension and damper variables take a little bit of time and a lot of human effort. A simple camber change requested by the race engineer has the knock-on effect of changing the ride height, which in turn affects the corner weight balance of the car, and so on and so forth. Some of the production-based classes aren't just a simple couple of turns of a spanner to effect a change. Some models have to be pretty-well dismantled, depending on the area you're effecting the change. All of this takes an element of time management and, if decision making is dragging on, the team manager has to step in and speed up the process.

All of the above is what I consider the ‘Soap Opera' going on behind every garage door, and it’s this dynamic between the personalities involved that I love about the 24H SERIES.

As ever, we have an abundance of track time this weekend for all of this to take place. By the time the cars line up on the grid for the race start, I can assure you there will be a lot of minds thinking, ‘if only I had suggested that damper setting, or maybe adjusted that rear camber by another half-a-degree.’

What we are certain of this weekend is that the Hankook 12H KUWAIT is another chapter of history being created in Middle East motorsport, and that the challenge as ever will be #ThisIsEndurance.