CrankandPiston Racing // Rd5 // UAE Touring Cars from crankandpiston on Vimeo.

The Crankandpiston.com Golf GTI had a fine day out on the track during Round 5 of the ever burgeoning UAE Touring Car Championship. The headline grabber being the VW GTi's first Class 1 podium finish as Phil, team C+P (Pops) and the Gulf-Sport crew grabbed a well deserved P3 during the second Touring Car race of the weekend.

First blood for Project GTI then! More importantly though, the Crankandpiston.com GTi car was back on the track for the first time after suffering a shunt during Round 4 which necessitated a full strip down and some hardwork on behalf of our sponsor Polimar Motors who well and truly pulled out all the stops to get the car to it's usual superbly presented look. We were right up to the wire and we only received the car the morning of the test day!

After a full check and set-up during the morning sessions, Andy Knight at Gulf-Sport had the car running beautifully and I was able to get the car lapping at its best pace ever throughout the day with zero issues. We where just a second behind the first of the top SEATs and a good margin ahead of the monster Honda's in Class 2.

Impressive show then, considering that unlike the ready-to-race factory built SEAT's, this particular car is very much a one-off, locally-built machine which wasn't much more than a flickering figment of my imagination less that 18 months ago. We are very happy that the Crankandpiston.com GTi is now showing the potential that we knew was there, not only that we are confident that there is more to come as the car gets truly dialled in.

p.s - excuse the miss shifts at the start...god only knows what was going on there!!