Master of the Masters

After Grand Prix Masters' inaugural event at Kyalami in November last year, series founder Scott Poulter looked as though he had won the world's largest-ever jackpot with a 5p piece. The former world-class wind surfer had pulled together some of the sport's greatest exponents, and packaged a seriously successful race which played to a capacity crowd (70,000 on race day) and reached 80 million households. In fact, 'successful' was way too small a word for the Altech Grand Masters of South Africa, as the event was dubbed.

Last weekend's Qtel Grand Prix Masters of Qatar was a complete contrast - where Kyalami's race was held on a historic, undulating circuit situated at 6,000 feet and played to a heaving, partying full-house crowd, just a handful of restrained spectators attended the second race, held as the sea-level track's first-ever four-wheeled competition - yet Poulter had every reason to be as pleased in the sandy Middle East as he had been in tropical Africa.