The return of the Porsche Carrera Cup Middle East after the holiday break for Round 3 of the 2025/26 season at theDubai Autodrome saw a lot of tight and hard racing, with the championship in all categories becoming very close – promising a lot of action for the second half of the season.

After two productive days of testing for the whole field, Alexandra Vateva, the only female driver in the field, topped the timesheets in free practice on Saturday morning, a nice achievement for the young Bulgarian. Behind her, Saud Al Saud from Saudi Arabia, who also led the GCC class, and Taichi Watarai, the dominator of the first two race weekends of the series, also had a good start into the weekend.

In the early afternoon, qualifying for the first race went underway – and for the fifth time in a row, it was Watarai who put his car on pole position. But it was quite close this time for the Japanese this time as James Wallis, the vicechampion of the previous PCCME season, who returned to the series after having missed out the first two rounds, was only 0.133 seconds behind, with Caleb Sumich from Australia also quite in reach, only one further tenth slower. Khaleb Alahmadi in P5 behind Alexandra Vateva was fastest in the GCC class, Frenchman Cedric Chassang topped the ProAM
class, while Krister Andero from Sweden led the Masters Category.

At the start of race 1, there was a hard fight for the lead between Watarai and Wallis, with the Brit finally coming out on top, and contact between the two in Turn 10. Watarai went off track, but managed to come back and after a short duel with Sumich kept second position. Behind, Vateva, who did not have a good getaway, dropped behind the two Saudi drivers Alahmadi and Al Saud. Watarai tried to make up ground on Wallis again, while having to be a bit careful after having received three warnings for track limits. Nevertheless, he came closer and closer, but an attack on lap 10 ended in another contact which dropped him back to P7. Wallis claimed victory after 14 laps ahead of Sumich and GCC winner Alahmadi. Cedric Chassang in P6 overall was the winner in the ProAm class, and Krister Andero topped the Masters category.

In qualifying 2 on Sunday morning, Caleb Sumich was the first driver this season to be able to beat Watarai for pole position, even if it was only by 55 thousands of a second. Khaled Alahmadi and Saud Al Saud formed the second row of the grid, with Saturday's winner Wallis having to be content with P5. Bankcy from Japan this time was fastest of the ProAM drivers, with Krister Andero again topping the Masters category.

Race 2 saw an exciting start, with Sumich taking the lead from pole position, but Wallis coming up to P3 immediately, only to be soon overtaken by Alahmadi again. Behind, there was contact between Bankcy and Al Saud, which dropped the Saudi driver to the end of the field and brought Bankcy a five second penalty later. In the Masters category, Petr Brecka managed to overtake Andero. On lap 4, Wallis finally got past Alahmadi again, while soon Watarai started to put a lot of pressure on Sumich and Al Saud made his way back through the field.

Things started to become very hectic on lap 10, when an incident between Brecka and Andero caused a safety-car. The Czech driver could not finish the race and so also lost the class lead to Andero, who still was classified third in the Masters category. With the field now very close together again, the re-start three laps later with only one lap to go saw a lot of racing action with contact between Sumich and Watarai, with the Japanese spinning and dropping back to P10. Then Wallis overtook Sumich by going off-track – for which he got a first five second penalty, later added by a
second one for not following safety-car procedures, which finally dropped him back to P12.

Ultimately the win went to Sumich ahead of Alahmadi and Saud Al Saud, who was the big winner of this intense last lap. The result also put Team Saudi Racing in the lead in the team championship, while Alahmadi is on top in the GCC classification. Further down in the field, there had also been contact between 4th placed Max Mutschlechner and Vateva, who dropped back to 7th. Another driver gaining a lot of positions was 16-year-old newcomer Joshua Berry from Australia, who ended up in P5. After Bankcy's penalty, Cedric Chassang again won the ProAM class and extended his lead there, while victory in the Masters class went to Canadian Mark J. Thomas.

“It was a good day”, said Sumich, who now is only 3.5 points behind Watarai in the championship, “even if this is not really the way I wanted to win, I would have preferred to cross the finish line in first place. But it is nevertheless great for me, especially with the next race in Abu Dhabi already coming up next weekend. I will go there with a lot of confidence; it's a track that I like and hopefully I can secure some more wins there.”

“We saw great, action-packed racing over the weekend. Thanks to the drivers and an overall very competitive starting grid, the event provided quite a show in front of approximately 10,000 spectators on site at Dubai Autodrome. On this note, our thanks also go to Al Nabooda and Porsche Middle East & Africa for hosting the event.”
Michael Schöch, General & Project Manager