The Ferrari F430 was most recently in race action at the Dubai Autodrome last month when the FIA GT3 Championship visited the UAE circuit for its final round of the season.

Fast on the heels of the announcement that the power-packed Toyo 24-hour motor racing challenge is heading back to the desert from the 10th to the 12th of January 2008, comes the confirmation that the UAE will have its own star-studded team in the starting grid for the race. The team, Khaleji Motorsport, will line up alongside over 90 touring and GT cars including superstars of the motor world such as Porsche, BMW, Ford, Seat, Renault, Ferrari, Volkswagen and Audi to name just a few. Khaleji Motorsport will race under the UAE flag, adding a new dimension of patriotic pride to this hugely popular event.

This is the third year running that this supercharged event will blaze the 5.39 km FIA certified track at the Dubai Autodrome, the region’s fully integrated motor sports facility. The number of participants is at an all-time high this year, and the presence of Khaleji Motorsports is a further indication of the growing popularity of motorsports in the region. The newly formed team boasts of a line up that includes high-profile names from the motorworld including Joe Macari and Adrian Newey of England, Robert Wilson of New Zealand and its owner, John Sinders, the co-owner of the Aston Martin and a resident of Dubai. A high-powered shipping consultant by day and an eternal fan of cars, racing and Aston Martins, John Sinders combined both his passions to buy the legendary car brand when it came up for sale. The Ferrari 430 is their car of choice for the 24-hour battle, and they will compete in the SP2 Class.

Each of the team-members has a motorsport CV that can overshadow most others. Joe Macari is a former FIA GTI and American Le Mans Series GT2 racer, and his name is today synonymous with high-performance sports cars in Europe and beyond. Joe Macari Service is today the leading official after sales dealer for Ferrari and Maserati in London, and earlier this year, Joe Macari teamed up with Adrian Newey to finish 4th in their class at the Le Mans 24 Hour race, one of the most gruelling races on the motorsports circuit.

Adrian Newey needs no introduction to any motorsports lover worth his salt, and brings more than two decades of racing experience at the highest level to the table. Considered one of the best engineers in Formula One, Newey-inspired designs have won numerous titles and almost 80 Grands Prix, dominating one of the most popular sports in the world for much of the 1990s. At the end of the 1990s, Newey stood head and shoulders above his peers in F1, with 6 of the previous 10 constructors titles and sixty-seven wins having been secured by cars of his design. In 2007 he made the move to modern racing, becoming part of the driver lineup in the AF Corse Ferrari F430 for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It will be a privilege to see this genius behind the wheel at the Toyo Tires 24 H race in Dubai.

Rob Wilson rounds off the star-studded team. A fast and successful competitor in all types of racing cars for the past 33 years, Rob today also works as the highly respected driving guru of a number of today's leading F1, GP2, Aussie V8, rally, Porsche Supercup, F3, Palmer Audi and Formula Renault stars, including David Coulthard, Valentino Rossi and the ProDrive Subaru drivers. The New Zealander made a huge impact in Formula 3, where he beat the stars of the day, including World Champions Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, in some of the most dramatic wheel-to-wheel races ever seen in the junior ranks. He has won over 400 races throughout his career including the FIA "World Endurance Touring Car Championship" as recently as 1999 and over the past couple of seasons has been a regular frontrunner in Maserati and BMW saloon cars. “We are delighted to be a part of the Toyo 24 Hour event, and I personally am proud to own a team that has such dead-set legends in its line-up” said John Sinders, the owner of Khaleji Motorsport. “We have what it takes to beat the best, but most of all, we want have some fun and ensure that the people watching get a feel of this exciting, high-powered world” he added.

The 24-hours race is one of the toughest circuit race challenges around and very few races of this nature are consistently active in the motorsports world. The drivers are allowed to race for a maximum of 2 hours each before coming in for a pit stop and a driver change. Khaleji Motorsport plans to compete in other endurance races in the region and Europe in the future. With such luminaries behind the wheel, this can only spell good news for the growing number of motorsports enthusiasts in the region.