Mohammed Bin Sulayem, Dubai’s own championship rally star, will be flying the flag for the Middle East this month, when he puts a series of high performance sports cars through their paces at a unique three-day charity event to be held in France. The Dream Machine programme, organised by luxury Swiss watch manufacturer TAG Heuer, will feature a host of celebrities and drivers from across the world, who have been chosen to take the wheels of a selection of 29 stunning GT cars at the Formula One proving track at Le Castellet, Provence. The event will mark the worldwide launch of TAG Heuer’s brand new high end watch range - The Grand Carrera Collection – and all proceeds from the sale of a specially commissioned photo-album recording the occasion will be donated to the Save the Children charity.
Burning rubber alongside Mr. Bin Sulayem at the programme will be a mixture of fellow race drivers and celebrity sports car enthusiasts, all of whom share a passion for fast cars. Representing the discipline of professional car competition will be F1 race leaders Fernando Alfonso and Lewis Hamilton and F1 Champions David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen. From the world of entertainment will be Hollywood actors Eric Bana and Timothy Dalton and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan. Two self-confessed car addicts from the music industry who will be attending are Jamiroquai frontman, Jay Kay and Pink Floyd drummer, John Mason, who regularly participates in the Le Mans 24 Hours Race.
Over the course of the three days, Mr. Bin Sulayman - who is the current President of the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE - will have the unique opportunity to apply his professional expertise to GT cars from the stables of the world’s most exclusive marques; names that include Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes Benz and Porsche. The 29 luxury sports motors will be raced around the Paul Ricard High Tech track at Le Castellet, where FI cars are regularly fined tuned by their teams during development testing season. The drivers will have the perfect opportunity to judge which of the machines are the best in their class for handling, roadholding, acceleration and all out pedal-to-the-metal top speed, on one of the rare occasions when the cream of the world’s automobiles are gathered together on a single occasion for comparison testing.
Mr. Bin Sulayem will also be able to participate in a series of workshops, from skid control and wet surface driving to car technology and competition racing; although as one of the world’s leading rally drivers, he is certainly no stranger to competitive driving. His personal specialist skills are in desert rallying and his premier event the FIA Middle-East Rally Championship; a race he first won in 1986 and which he has gone on to win 14 times, never being defeated whenever he has participated. This Dubai based expert’s capabilities at the highest level of motorsports is so well recognised that he has been appointed by the race governing bodies as the official representative to oversee all motorsports events across the UAE; a position that saw him become Chairman of the Organising Committee for the UAE Desert Challenge, a race that he himself launched in 1991 and which has gone on to be the final round of the FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup.
During the programme, professional photographs of the drivers and their cars will be commissioned and a unique record of the event compiled and stored in an exclusive photo album, titled; “Dream Machines driven by Generous Hearts;” a publication that celebrates the very special love affair between influential men and women and the cars that inspire them. All proceeds from the sale of the book will support Save the Children’s recreational and sports projects around the world, giving children the opportunity to learn, play and develop. Save the Children is the world’s leading independent children’s rights organisation and works tirelessly to improve the lives of children in more than 100 countries.
The Dream Machine event organisers, TAG Heuer, have unrivalled experience with GT; or “Grand Tourism” motoring – a discipline which offers the ultimate in high-performance, long-distance driving. The company’s association with this very essence of road sports travel goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when they were the first luxury watch manufacturer to provide chronographs for car dashboards. TAG Heuer’s racing heritage stretches back as far as the earliest days of sports car competition and they have an unrivalled presence at the leading race series across the world. The company was the first watch brand to partner with racing drivers, the first watch brand to partner with a Formula One team and the first watch brand to crack and master the split second time barrier. TAG Heuer was the Official Timekeeper of the F1 Championship from 1992 to 2003 and the Official Timekeeper and Chronograph of IRL/Indy 500 Race from 2004 to 2006. The company is renowned for the production of luxurious chronographs with an unsurpassed precision of 1/10th, 1/100th and 1/1,000th of a second.
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PHOTO CAPTION:
1. Mohammed bin Sulayem – one of the VIP guests being flown in by Tag Heuer
2. Lewis Hamilton (UK) will be among the racing superstars at the event
3. Shahrukh Khan will be the Indian celebrity present at the Tag Heuer event
ABOUT TAG HEUER
TAG Heuer, the leader in prestigious sports watches and chronographs since 1860, is one of the largest and fastest growing luxury Swiss watch Brands. The Swiss watch making legend draws upon its active engagement in the world of sports to create the most accurate measuring instruments and sports watches in the world. TAG Heuer is today the first watchmaker ever to master luxurious Chronographs with an unsurpassed precision of 1/10th, 1/100th and 1/1,000th of a second. From the Olympic Games in the 1920s to its role as official timekeeper to within 1/10,000th of a second for the legendary Indy 500, TAG Heuer, in a constant quest for innovation, excellence, performance and prestige, continues to aim ever higher, as reflected in its partnerships with Team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes in Formula 1 and its two aces: Fernando Alonso, youngest ever and already two times Formula 1 world champion and Lewis Hamilton, GP2 world Champion in 2006. With two times Formula 1 world vice-champion and Scuderia Ferrari F1 driver Kimi Räikkönen, with world number 1 golfer Tiger Woods and WTA number 1 tennis player Maria Sharapova, with Nascar idol Jeff Gordon, Champcar three times world champion Sébastien Bourdais, as well as Hollywood and Bollywood icons Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman and Shah Rukh Khan, TAG Heuer more than ever epitomizes Sport and Glamour !
