“In Kuwait, we had nothing there for the first two days!” explains Jasmin Preisig, who competed alongside Al Sabah and long-time teammate Ivars Vallers in Kuwait. “If this had happened at a circuit in Europe, we could have done something, but we really did have nothing! So, I could only do the track walk, and maybe [memorize] the track map. In fact, we even did a sightseeing tour, because all we could do was wait!”

Fortunately, touring car experience meant the reigning TCR Drivers’ runner-up was quickly up to speed, though the same, unfortunately, could not be said for her teammates…

“Our car arrived very late. It may have been one of the last ones, so we missed one free practice day,” she continues. “I didn’t need a long time to [get up to speed], so I think, for me, one day was enough to learn. But every driver is a little bit different. For Ivars, he did his first laps in the night, during qualifying! So he needed a lot longer to learn the track.”

“I did think we could win, but BBR was very strong last year. They had four SEMI-PRO drivers I think” – Thai teammates Tanart Sathienthirakul, and Kantadhee and Kantasak Kusiri all raced as SEMI-PROs in Kuwait, as did Jasmin, while gentlemen drivers Pasarit Promsombat and Anusorn Asiralertsiri rounded out BBR’s line-up. – “And they were very fast. Plus, we had an accident on the first day, so the car was already broken, and we lost a lot of time during the race too. By then, we knew could not win, but I think, we felt, without those issues, we would have been a lot closer [to BBR] and a win could have been possible.”

An already tight prep window was sadly made even narrower when Mohammad Al Sabah had a semi-high-speed off during one of Thursday mornings private tests, the Kuwaiti driver writing off most of the Audi’s front end in the process. 

“It was during the second private test, in the morning, and Mohammed was on his fifth lap, I think. He was okay, but the car was totally damaged. We all thought it was finished. And the car was totally new, so that was quite painful.

“But then the guys worked the whole day, because at 3pm that same day, we had qualifying. It took the mechanics six, maybe seven hours, but they did an amazing job and we were able to start qualifying. And that was the first proper test for us!”

A herculean turnaround by Wolf-Power’s mechanics meant the Audi was just about ready in time for qualifying (the team got no running in at all during Free Practice). The hangover of Al Sabah’s shunt could still be felt however, and the ill-handling Audi finished qualifying propping up the TCR grid, its aggregate best laptime a worrying ELEVEN seconds slower than BBR had managed.  

Struck down twice already before the race had even gotten underway, Wolf-Power’s misfortune didn’t stop there. 

Unsurprisingly, after two heavy accidents, all was not right with the #116 Audi when it rejoined the race: even the source of the earlier vibration hadn’t been found: “we had to spend a lot of time trying to find out why we had this vibration.” To make matters worse, during the fifth hour, the barely controlled juddering managed to knock one half of the Audi’s bonnet off its runner. Were it not for the calamities that had come before it, the sight would have looked comical!

Ironically though, it was early class leader, and long-time TCR rival, AC Motorsport that was the first to fall in Kuwait.

The Belgian team, also running a second-generation Audi RS 3 LMS (for the first time), made the first of an eventual 19 stops during the third hour, similarly on the hunt for a mysterious vibration. More than an hour of hair-pulling had already been lost when the decision was finally made to pull the plug on safety grounds at two-thirds distance. “You can barely see straight when you’re driving,” a clearly disappointed Mathieu Detry commented. 

Wolf-Power meanwhile, having eventually found a setup befitting the wounded Audi, opted to continue, though it would be another nine hours before the #116 Audi caught, and passed, its now-retired AC Motorsport brethren for 2nd in-class. 100 laps (!) further up the road, BBR was untouchable, and the Thai team cantered to its fifth win from six starts to add the TCE Continents Trophy to its already sewn-up European title in Kuwait. 

Not that this mattered to the Wolf-Power camp. With the gearbox issues that had plagued the team in Barcelona nowhere to be seen, and with Lady Luck deciding enough was more than enough after two heavy accidents, the final three hours were completed without incident, bar a suspected ride height adjustment (“a symphony of duct tape” awaited radiolemans’ Nick Daman in the garage). And after 12 grueling hours, Al Sabah finally drove the battered #116 Audi across the line, at his home circuit, to secure 2nd in TCR. It marked Wolf-Power Racing’s best, and easily its hardest-earned, result of the 2022 season.