Century in Last-Minute Equipment Scramble for Gulf 12H

A customs delay on a shipping container from Kuwait caused a “very stressful” last-minute equipment scramble for Century Motorsport ahead of this weekend’s Gulf 12 Hours in Abu Dhabi.

Much of the British team’s GT3 equipment for the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli race was in the container that it used for last weekend’s 12H Kuwait, where it ran two BMW M4 GT4s.

Century is fielding a BMW M4 GT3 in Abu Dhabi, and the car arrived in time for the event.

But as the days ticked down before the first track session on Friday, it became clear that the container and its cargo would not arrive on schedule due to a hold-up.

As a result, four Century crew members including team principal Nathan Freke flew to Kuwait on Thursday night and retrieved as much kit as they could from the container.

At the same time, local team Rabdan Motorsports stepped in to provide some parts that helped to get Century’s Gulf 12 Hours operation up and running.

“We raced in Kuwait last week with two GT4 cars,” Freke told Sportscar365.

“Our entire team of kit was in there. We shipped the GT3 car in a separate container directly here. We had the car, the wheels, a spare front end, fuel rig and [wheel] guns

“Because of the tight turnaround time between the end of British GT and shipping the car, we had to undergo a big overhaul. Some bits we didn’t just have enough time to ship with the car. So we hand-carried that to Kuwait and put it all in the container.

“Basically, the container is still in Kuwait right now. It came to D-Day yesterday where we had the realization that we weren’t going to get the container.

“We needed some essential bits to run the car. We made some provisions to get other bits and pieces and made the decision yesterday to fly three guys to Kuwait, get into the container and take the bits we needed.”

Freke explained that his Kuwait-bound group flew north from Abu Dhabi just after 4 p.m. on Thursday afternoon.

Upon reaching the container at 6 p.m. — following a reportedly wild off-road taxi journey — they collected brakes, dampers, telemetry equipment, wiring, helmets and other tools under official supervision before arriving back in Abu Dhabi at around 1 a.m.

Upon landing they went through customs, where all the equipment except the radios were approved.

On the ground, Century received support from Rabda, which usually runs Porsche 911 GT3 Cups. Optimum Motorsport is also understood to have helped with some items, considering it initially had plans for a two-car Gulf 12 Hours entry but is now only running a single McLaren 720S GT3 for Inception Racing.

“We got introduced to a local guy called Chris [from Rabdan] who turned up this morning with a 3.5-ton truck,” Freke said.

“He’s given us tools. He also has a container stuck in Kuwait, so he’s only got some bits. They’ve let us use their [tire] ovens and bottles.

“He’s a breath of fresh air. He turned up with a crate of Red Bull. I just couldn’t believe it. Nobody has said, ‘go away, we don’t want to help you’. Everybody’s here doing their own job and not everyone brings two lots of stuff. We’ve been asking for some really stupid stuff.

“Where they’ve been able to help, they have. That’s been quite nice. Slowly but surely the pieces of the jigsaw are popping into place.”

Despite getting the car running on the track, Freke acknowledged that Century’s buildup to the 12-hour IGTC race has been less than ideal. The team is competing in the Pro-Am class with Darren Leung, Eduardo Coseteng and BMW factory driver Dan Harper.

“It’s the absolute worst preparation possible,” he said.

“I feel terrible: we’ve got a new customer in Eduardo and he’s turned up at the garage and it looks [bare]. It’s been stressful, and today has just been blind panic because we’ve had to get the car set up. We’ve had to do pretty much a day and a half of work in six hours.

“We ran [in Open Practice 1]. We were just bedding brakes, nothing representative.

“We need a pretty problem-free weekend because we’re just so stripped bare of what we’ve got. If we have an incident, I’ve only got a spare front end.

“We had a full spares inventory in the container. As of a few hours ago, the container was still sat in Kuwait. It has cleared customs now.”