Qubaisi has tipped Abu Dhabi teammate, Musaed Al-Murar, as a future champion in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East, the all-action race series he hopes to win next season. While Al-Qubaisi produced a string of impressive performances last season and recorded his breakthrough race victory in the one-make series, Al-Murar cruised to the rookie championship in an identical Abu Dhabi-branded Porsche GT3 Cup car. Having now embarked on a second summer of fierce competition in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, Al-Qubaisi is already looking ahead to the new GT3 Cup series starting in November, and has high hopes for himself, and his team-mate. “Musaed did a great job in his first season,“ he said. “He dominated the rookie championship. Now he just needs more experience to help him continue to improve. I am pretty sure that, with the right amount of training, he can become champion in the next three years.” Discussing his own title ambitions in the 2011-12 Porsche GT3 Cup series, he said: “Experience is the key to being successful. The more you practice the better the results you‘ll achieve. I definitely gained a lot from my first season in the Supercup series and it paid off in my Porsche GT3 Cup campaign in the Middle East.” For a second year he is spending much of his time in Supercup action on Europe's top race tracks this summer, looking for the extra edge needed to carry him to title glory in the Middle East next season. It's a repeat of his tactics last year when he went in pursuit of some badly needed extra experience. It proved to be highly successful, as Al-Qubaisi returned to his home region a much more composed driver, and there were immediate results. As the Porsche new GT3 Cup season opened on his home Yas Marina Circuit in support of the F1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last November, the Emirati driver recorded back-to-back podium finishes – his first in the series. A trail of encouraging displays followed in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and when the series returned to the UAE capital in April, Al-Qubaisi made his big breakthrough, winning Round 8 of the 12-round championship. He headed into the last four rounds at Dubai Autodrome as a genuine title contender. And even though he suffered a frustrating climax to the season, eventually finishing fifth overall, he looks back on the 2010-11 championship with a lot of satisfaction. “It was a very important season for me because I was able to improve a lot from the previous campaign and clinch my first race win,” he said. “That was a great feeling and it gave me confidence for the new Supercup season too.” __
