Dunlop faced new challenges at the tenth and penultimate round of the FIA GT Championship in the Dubai desert, with sand, heat and humidity causing problems for the cars and drivers. The hard compound tyres were easily able to double stint in the tough conditions on the GT class cars, and could have been triple stinted had teams chosen to do so.

The Super Racing Weekend meeting was the first ever international race in the UAE and the cars were forced to spend their practice days clearing the circuit which was lightly coated with sand. As the meeting went on the circuit was cleaned, but tyre wear was kept low, helped by Dunlop’s expertise in developing tyres to work in such conditions.

The RML team brought its sole surviving Saleen S7R of Tommy Erdos and Mike Newton home in eighth position overall, sixth in class after a race in air temperatures of 34 degrees centigrade and track temperatures of more than 45 degrees. The Graham Nash Saleen of Rocky Agusta, Gabriele Lancieri and Paolo Ruberti, finished 11th overall, eighth in class. Drivers struggled to make it through their driving time in the closed cockpit cars but Dunlop was delighted with the performance of the tyres.

“We were racing third and fourth in the opening hour of the race, and the leading car as planned changed tyres at the first pit stop and ran the rest of the race on that set,” said Dunlop manager Graham Shuter. “The tyres performed very well, though some of out teams had mechanical problems. They all lapped in consistent lap times, so overall we are delighted with the performance of the Dunlop tyre.”

The Gruppe M Porsche of Tim Sugden and Marc Lieb put on a fine race to finish fourth in the N-GT category, behind the championship-leading Freisinger Motorsport Porsches and the GPC Ferrari 360 Modena. Gerold and Christian Ried continued their awesome point-scoring record, having scored in each of the ten rounds thus far when they finished seventh in class.

The final round of the FIA GT Championship is in Zhuhai, China, on November 14.