Not many can claim that they’ve won a national championship simply by practising their hobby, but it’s amazing what passion and hard work can help one achieve in the world of sport.
For architect Mahmoud Tannir, his passion for bike riding has driven him to capture his maiden Motor City UAE Sportbike Championship title earlier this month, only seven years from the day he got on a motorcycle for the very first time. Now he is arguably the fastest Lebanese on the planet.
Born and raised in Beirut, the 37-year-old moved to Dubai in 2003 and for the past five years has been juggling his time between designing shopping centres for Majid Al Futtaim Properties by day, and training and racing sportbikes in the afternoons and weekends.
He bought his first motorcycle in 2005 to have fun with it on the road, but racing caught his attention when he started joining some friends on visits to the Dubai Autodrome. “They used to do some track days at the Dubai Autodrome, so I went and did a couple of track days and I learnt about a school called California Superbike School,” Tannir told Sport360°.
“It teaches you the basics of riding and takes you up to several levels. I found it very interesting and did all the levels and during that I started doing track days where I watched some of the guys racing already but I never really thought of getting into racing. But when I finished the school and I saw myself during track days getting better, I thought it’s a really exciting thing to try and I thought why not?”
This season, Tannir took the Championship after winning an astonishing 12 out of 14 races and his teammate Alan Boyter could have finished runner-up had it not been for some bad luck midseason with his motorcycle, followed by an unfortunate accident in the desert on his dirt bike that saw him break his collarbone.
Fresh off his Championship win, Tannir recalls his early days in the sport – his first season racing was in 2007 – two years before he had formed the Vendetta Racing Team with Boyter. “My first season was surely not within a team,” said Tannir. “It’s a very difficult sport to get into not because of what it involves in terms of machinery or risk, but the main issue is budgeting for it because it’s a very expensive sport like any motorsport.
“You need a lot of sponsors to back you up. So people start in this sport locally here as a privateer. And I started as one and we even finished last season as a privateer as a team. I started by myself, funding myself through it. It was like a learning curve, I didn’t do particularly good because I was learning.
“Until I think my third season, I teamed up with a good friend of mine, Alan Boyter, and we saw the opportunity of building a team and this is our third season together. That helped us get some sponsors on board, because as a team you’re better established and you look more professional and you try to do the correct branding.
“This season was a little bit more difficult than last season. Although it ended very well, but we had no sponsors at the beginning unfortunately. The season before we were sponsored by Yas Marina Circuit and it was a really good push for us and that season we finished second and third in the Championship and of course the sponsorship helped us a lot, not just on the financial side but it’s just less to think about, you can concentrate more on what you do when you know you have somebody backing you up.”
Tannir and Boyter however found themselves without a sponsor early this season and funded their assault on the Championship from their own pockets, while searching for some backers during the series. Their great performances caught the attention of the local dealership of Triumph, which is their racing bike of choice, and the Vendetta Racing duo were sponsored by the dealership in the final two races of the season.
“That really helped us a lot and it gave them the exposure they were after and we gave a very good indication of what the Triumph brand can do. So we were very happy with that and hopefully that will help us to get something next season,” Tannir added.
Tannir believes Boyter was one of the reasons he did so well this season, as he pushed him harder and harder towards the title. He said: “Finishing last season was the starting point of this season. The way me and Alan finished second and third gave us a good idea of what we are capable of. I think we knew we had very good bikes, we knew the team was good. We had good support from mechanics, our families and friends. And ourselves, we trained very well, we were really prepared.
“So this season our aim was to win the Championship. The first round, Alan won the race and I came second. And the second race, I won and he came second. So from the beginning we felt ‘okay, this going to be a little bit awkward’.
“It was fun, but also it put a tiny bit of pressure on us. But we’re very good friends. When you’re racing it’s a different story but when we come back to the pit we discuss what we’ve been doing. “So the next races it was the same as well, he won the first and I won the second. And that just indicated that the whole season would almost be between me and him.
“If you see the results, we were really close. We had a lot of on-track fights, but also there were a couple of other guys they started progressing through the season. “But I tried to be prepared physically as much as I can, my training was really strict. Every single session I tried to do my best on the bike, extract the best from it, to understand it a little bit more. I think that helped me be very consistent. I think being consistent is what made the difference between me and every other competitor.”
While Tannir believes circuit racing as a sport may not be as well-established as other forms of motorsport in the UAE, he believes the addition of the Rookie Class has raised lots of interest and helped bring more competition to the grid.
His wife Deborah and 18-month old daughter Shamsa were there to celebrate his victory two weeks ago at the Autodrome and Tannir believes the familial atmosphere on race days adds more to the sport. He said: “The racing community in this country is beautiful because every racer, they bring their families, their friends, their kids, and it’s like a small festival. It’s wonderful because everybody knows everybody.”
Tannir now is looking ahead to next season where he hopes to move up a class from 600cc to 1000cc and plans on racing in Qatar superbikes, where he aims to find some tougher competition.
LIFESTYLE
Home life: Married to wife Deborah and father to 18-month-old daughter Shamsa.
Favourite: Supports Bayern Munich.
Hobbies: Enjoys playing football, volleyball, cycling and fitness training.
Other sports: Played volleyball for his university team in Lebanon.
Idol: Valentino Rossi.
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