vrOOm 4x4 Trip!

Last weekend me and a group of friends went to Oman for some Off-Road action and a nice lunch afterwards,

The grid lineup consisted of the following:

Land Rover Defender TD5 SWB a.k.a Ruby

2 Mitsubishi Pajero LWB

Mitsubishi Pajero SWB

and my Nissan Armada aka Butso

once we reached Oman, the action started off easy with some gravel and rocky paths, and then curiosity hit about a leading upward trail into the mountains,,, the wise advice of our women passengers was deafened by typical Boys n' Toys !! 

Butso and Ruby

Butso in action!!

The off-road expedition was cut short due to rough terrain ahead that would damage the stock cars (all except Ruby). We did push our cars to the max with the rough terrain BIG time!! i was sooo impressed by my Butso handling the terrain, and thankfully with no damages, well other than the plants scratching the hell out of my paint, yea Ali, get a black car,, suuuuper bright of you!! well, now the dangerous thought of buying a Wrangler as my Off-Road toy is poking me endlessly, siighhh...

Next stop was the lovely retreat, Hatta Fort Hotel for a quick lunch before heading into the desert for a short camping spot !! 

And here are some pics of our camping site!! it was quickly set up by the boys, with the wimiiinnnzz setting up the food for their Macho Macho Men!! hahaha corn cobs, marshmallows, Nutelllllllllla sandwiches and a crazy dude wanted to bbq a banana !!! 

The trip was a great experience with friends, good food, lotsa laughs and pics!! 

Thank you allll!! 

Dany & Lama, Carl & Maya, Firas & Sally, Tony & Soulaf, Rabih & wife :$, Wael, Hatem, Sarah, Alan and Habib !!

P.S: i still felt alone with all this company, my baby girl @LaSahely was MIA but present in my heart and running around in my head telling me to be safe :D 

Till the next trip, keep those engines revvvvvin'!!! 

@Alexi13

Follow me on Twitter.com/Alexi13

Zangetsu a.k.a Honda S2000

well i was like a kid in a candy store coupla weeks ago, i was granted the chance to drive one of the cars i fascinated about getting before i got my monstrous Nissan Armada !! 


The Honda S2000 !!!! 


(for reference only, the blue car is not the actual one)

My good friend @Wassim_Moumneh (a social media guru, ex-rugby player :p, you should follow him) exchanged his Honda S2000 for a week, and boy what a week that was for me... 


The car has been dubbed a motorbike with 4 wheels, and owning a superbike myself, from the same Honda familia, i must say the car earns it! 


The car looks like a tiny Japanese corvette, with its long bonnet, uber short tail and double exhaust pipes! 


The inside does looks close to the last generation of Corvettes, with the super simplicity it carries in matters of equipment, the radio for example is hidden behind a flip down hatch, and to be honest u won't need it with the deafening sound of the exhaust!!  


a quick look inside 

one of the most distinctive features in the mini-rocket, is the digital dashboard!!! your inner kid awakens and there you are, driving a car from a playstation game right one the street!!! thts a surreal experience, pretty challenging as well, you get confused whether you wana look at the road and watch out for traffic and things zooming by, or enjoy the digital rev counter and the rest playin in front of your eyes, hmmm safety wins and you end up looking at the road ahead :( 

The other clever design feature is the dashboard controls, you can notice in the pic above how closely packed they are... well the engineers wanted to have everythin within a finger reach, for the driver to use without having to take his hands of the steering wheel!!  man the Japs think of everything!! 

Well yes, you have no time to take your hands off the wheel, the only time you can i for shifting gears with the super short stick on the Honda S2000 giving you lots of umphhhh with every gear, making use, abusing this super high rev engine, up to 9,000rpm !!! yes its tht high!!1 

in the words of my friend Wassim, "Ali, below 5,000rpm, you are driving a Civic, but once the V-Tec engine kicks in at 5k, you are driving a little rocket!" 

@Alexi13

Follow me on Twitter.com/Alexi13

That's my buttermint for the day! 

Tribute to Champions !!

We are The Champions, my frieeeennndd!!! 

Champions OMD Racing

Yessss indeed readers!!! 

This past weekend (22-23 Oct '10), OMD Racing has won 1st place !!!! in the 24hr Karting Challenge - Round 2 at the Dubai Autodrome... in the Corporate racers leg..the race within the race!!!

A brief background on this whole thing… the Dubai Autodrome holds yearly 3 rounds of 24hr Karting Endurance Challenges, where both professional racers and corporate teams, ordinary auto enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies, posing as Clark Kent(s) during their day job, and passionate auto racers on the weekends :D 

Round one was held in March of this year, and our team ranked 2^nd after battling a series of misfortunes!! Well, in 24 hours of racing, you are bound to misfortunes! Of all sorts and shapes..

Well this 2^nd round, we knocked everyone else off the grid (corporate wise ;) ) Yup, we brought home the gold…

OMD Racing is a powerhouse fueled by determined racing enthusiasts!! Meet the team:

Thomas "Tom" El-Khoury - our Team Captain

Ziad "SignorZ" Jammal - our resident Hulk!

Saleh "TheGhazal" Ghazal - The poser of the team! And damn good at it too!

Maher "Il Ghazal" Ghazal - The Speedy Gonzales!

Firas "Kikous" Ghazal - The Screaming push we all love with his "GHADDAAAAABBBB" (arabic for anger, as motivation)

Saleh "Wolf" Agha - The fierce predator!!

Antoine "ASD" Challita - The restless attacker!! 

Mustafa "Moe" El Khatib - The Smiley face!

Ali "AA" Awada - The Wacko!! (moi!!)

Rawad "Insomniac"El Khoury - The priceless pit crew member!

and last but not least of all 

Hisham "The Boss" Abi Nassif - The master of ceremony, the graceful Pit Manager!! Hats off – RESPECT AND LOVE!!

With an early start, we all gather up at 8 am on friday, attend the teams briefing session, driver weighing session, registration and random picking of the kart numbers  - 20 was our calling card... we head onto our pit, set up the table, the comms for driver-pit contact, the pit board, the Mac with the trusty excel sheet, racing gear and the essential sleeping tent!! 

Practice goes well, car aint that perfect, but we decide to test it out on the qualification run, hmmpppfff barely satisfied, we come off 14th on the grid..

Safety car rolls the karts out, ready, set, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

With a thunderous rolling start, we pick up the pace and position ourselves into 10 positions after the first coupla hours, where we decide to change karts after realizing the deficiency in power output of ours.

With that done, the hours start piling up, drivers rotating (each driver is allowed a stint of 60 mins max, no back to back), night settles and track conditions change. Desert humidity peaks its ugly side in, and the track becomes slippery for the karts!!  we push through the night, resting our fast drivers with their intermittent sleeping breaks to keep those energy and concentration levels in check...

15 hours into the race, and voila, last round's bad luck decides to hang around :s

power output of the car decreases

kart's front axis misaligned

tremendous understeer on left cornering

wheel bearing starts grinding to the suspension arm

wheel almost pops out!!!

Change of kart is mandatory to keep our lead for the last 5 hours!!! 

With a monstrous battle for the lead without competition, overlapping them by 5 laps, the misfortune reduced it to a mere lead of 1 lap and 45 seconds into the final laps!!!! 

Thankfully, our determination, concentration, the never endless adrenaline pouring out of us more than sweat, and our biggest asset, our chief strategist's tactics, The Boss's eagle eye strategies pushed us through to crush the competition, lead the corporate teams in the race and achieve a well deserved and earned W I N !!! 

OMD Racing would like to thank the organisers of the race, the race directors, the race marshals, the race mechanics and most importantly their supporting fans and groupies!!! 

special thanks go to Dani, Rami, Lina, Reem, Marc, Faisal, Wael, Elie, Lana,  Sally, Ban, Dima, Anna, Lama, Sirine, Soulaf and Cirine!!

Sorry if we forgot anyone else, rest assure we are forever thankful !! 

Come cheer us on at the next round on December 10-11 2010!! 

Follow the racers on Twitter

@wousil - Tom

@zjammal - SignorZ

@TheGhazal - TheGhazal

@Hippo_crit - Il Ghazal

@firasghazal - Kikous

@tfehh - ASD

@SalehAgha - Wolf

@Alexi13 - AA

@Hisham75 - The Boss

@Rawadkh - Insomniac

Boys And Their Toys

So I went Karting today!! 

Yesss Yess.. boys and their toys!! 

It all started out of boredom, when one day we decided to pass time me and some buddies, all of a sudden we find ourselves competing with each other for the best lap times (duuuhhhh, we are boys!! hellooo!!!) 

My buddy Zee is a formula 1 freak and loves it, he started sharing how most F1 drivers start off in karting, and we asked around and found that some competitions are on the calendar in the Dubai Autodrome! Ali and Zee, HOOKED!

We started training more, gathered some friends, got the support of our company and entered a 24hrs endurance race!!! yes the results were good :D 

Another round of this race is up in 4 weeks and we had our first training session 
tonight,, 

It is quite a pleasure to be part of a team that strives on friendly competition, we are able to push each other to our best performances with the classic guy teasing process!! Guess our male hormones are the hardest to control, our ego always finds a way to pop up and challenge others, even when we know we can’t be up to the challenges! Yet, I believe this is grounds for a healthy team spirit, ok sometimes ;)