DUBAI // At 270kph, Khaled al Qubaisi has to brake hard - down to 100kph - on the first turn. Get it wrong, and the Emirati racer and his three teammates will spend the next 24 hours trying to make up for lost time.
From 2pm today, he will be sharing the track with 87 other cars, all vying for first place in the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai, an endurance race that will test the stamina of some of the world's top drivers.
As they get off to a rolling start, there will be so many competitors that the last cars will be nearly a kilometre behind those at the front.
Paul Velasco, the communications manager at Dubai Autodrome, said the first corner would be exciting. "More than 5,000 horsepower will be unleashed into Turn 1, as 87 cars jostle for position," he said. "Sheikh Zayed Road has seen nothing like it.
"There'll be some paint scraping and very close racing. The mindset of endurance racing is to survive. It's not won in the first corner."
By the time they finish, at 2pm tomorrow, the cars will have done between 750 and 800 laps and changed tyres on average 16 times.
"It has rained before in the past and it can get foggy at night. So all these factors add to the challenges the teams are likely to face," said Mr Velasco.
The Dubai Autodrome chairman, Saeed Khalfan, said it was the first important international 24-hour race of 2011.
"It's in the big league," he said. The presence of major teams such as Mercedes was evidence of that," he added.
For the sixth year running, 88 international teams have descended on the Dubai Autodrome. Behind the pit lanes, Italian, French and English can be heard as mechanics hammer and bang car parts into place.
Flying the local flag will be the Emirati-owned and driven LAP57 team, making their second appearance in the race.
With no sponsor, the team have had to fund their entry from their own pockets, buying tyres and fuel and paying mechanics. Not including the car, the cost comes in at about Dh150,000.
They say they have learnt their lessons from last year, adopting the attitude of what can go wrong, will go wrong.
Last year, said 31-year-old Umair Ahmed Khan, one of the team's drivers, "we focused on a lot of things that we thought would break, which didn't. What we didn't think would break did".
The gear box in their Honda Civic Type R broke three times, with the car spending four of the 24 hours in the garage as a consequence. This year, they plan to take it more steadily.
"We are not focusing on fast laps," said Khan. "We did that last year. We just need to maintain a pace this time."
The team already have a taste for winning, having won the UAE's National Touring Championship in their class three years in a row. They currently lead the 2011 season.
But the challenges of a 24-hour event are very different from the hour-long races in the Touring Championship. "The first two hours are very tiring for any driver," said Khan. "You just want it to finish as soon as possible.
"But once you step out you want to get back in again. If you're fighting with someone for the position, the two hours are no time."
Two hours is the maximum each driver is allowed per stint.
"When you have someone ahead and the radio is telling you that you need to catch him so increase your pace, we are doing good. It is the adrenalin that you want to keep up."
Another Emirati racer, Saif Hassan, also took part in last year's race - in a go-kart. This year the Birchwood Racing driver is back in an Aston Martin GT4. "[The 24-hour karting] was a toe in the bathtub," he said. "I have no idea of what to expect." He said the local drivers' experience of the Autodrome should give them an advantage.
"The only thing is we are not very experienced with this type of car. We had a test session in Silverstone and had no more than one hour. We have 24 hours to learn it." He is backed by an Abu Dhabi architectural firm, BEAD Architecture and Engineers.
"It is great to see an Abu Dhabi company supporting Abu Dhabi drivers," he said. Even with backing and experience, they will be up against some very strong competition.
Michael Waltrip, a two-time Daytona winner, and Bernd Schneider, who used to race in Formula One, will be on the starting grid. Most of the others, according to Mr Khalfan, will be veterans of other 24-hour races such as Le Mans or Spa-Francorchamps.
Al Qubaisi's teammate in Tolmit Arabia, Sean Edwards, a 24-year-old from London who lives in Monaco, has completed six 24-hour races in Europe. He said the key to winning is "to keep out of the pits".
"We are the fastest car out there and some of the smaller cars have to take a lot of care and avoid contact."
