DK Engineering's James Cottingham at the Gulf Historic Dubai GP Revival

In honour of the first Grand Prix hosted in Dubai in 1981, once again a commemorative event was hosted at the Dubai Autodrome, which involved a great variety of some of the most iconic racing cars that spanned the 1960s to the 2000s – and everything in between. Additionally, there were several novel races as well as the rest of the racing, including the children’s only Dubai Saghir Revival and the Bicycle GP.

The on-track action commenced on the Friday with free practices and qualifying, for the races taking place over the weekend. The crowds witnessed a swathe of Le mans Group C cars as well as a grid of 70s Formula one cars that took to the circuit to build confidence and familiarity before going all out in their respective qualifying sessions in the afternoon.

James Cottingham, in the iconic 289 ‘Columbia’ Cobra prepared by Pursuit, teamed up with Richard Cook for entry into the ‘Dubai Classics’ class - consisting of 1960s GT race cars. The pair showed great promise leading up to the race. Unfortunately, a mechanical failure cut the efforts of the team short.

As expected, this year’s edition of the Gulf Historic was a diverse and expansive event with an exceptional level of attendance and hospitality. Recently, GP Extreme and Masters Historic have merged as Ron Maydon of Masters Historic hands over the baton after twenty years to Fred Fatien, a longstanding supporter of the Masters Historic and Founder of GP Extreme. The Masters Historic calendar and schedule is expected to be unchanged for 2024 and will allegedly begin to smoothly transition and expand from the 2025 season onwards. We are incredibly excited to see how Masters Historic develops under new management, and how this will further expand and develop interest and popularity, as well as potential new grids and classes for not only the Gulf Historic, but other events, in the years to come.

James Cottingham will be returning to the Dubai Autodrome, along with Sam De Haan and Tom Gable, in the #69 McLaren 720S GT3 for the Asian Le Mans 4 Hours of Dubai in February 2024.

A thank you goes out to Johnny Lau (Instagram: @machina.studios) for photographing us during the event.