Think of 24-hour racing and the chances are you picture images of warm summer weekends at Le Mans, Nürburgring or perhaps Spa. Sadly as we're currently still scraping ice off our windscreens in the morning the fond notion of spending a balmy evening nursing a cold trackside beer and watching increasingly battle-worn GT cars race into the twilight seem an awfully long way off.

All of which makes me doubly fortunate to have spent last weekend driving in the  Dubai 24-hours. Technically speaking it might be winter in the UAE, but that still means temperatures touching 30deg during the day and 20-something degrees at night. If the UK enjoys weather that good this summer I'll be a happy boy. And pigs will sprout wings.

I was racing a GT4-spec Nissan 370Z for RJN Motorsport. The team also happened to be running a sister 370Z for all four graduates of the GT Academy, which uses the Playstation game Gran Turismo 5 to identify raw racing talent then puts the very best through an intensive programme of real racing with the help of Nissan and the boys from RJN. There'll be a feature on what this revolutionary driver discovery and development scheme has achieved in a forthcoming issue of evo magazine, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some images from this less well-known but increasingly well regarded endurance race.

The Dunlop 24-hours of Dubai is a relatively new race, but in the seven years it has been held the entries have become increasingly strong, with an intriguing and impressive mix of VLN and Britcar regulars, plus UAE-based racers and some of the very best teams in GT3 racing. This year the grid of 75 cars including a mega class of  Audi R8, Ferrari 458, Mercedes SLS, Porsche 911, BMW Z4 and Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 cars. To add some spice there was even a GT3 NISMO GT-R making it's 24-hour debut.

Like much of Dubai the Dubai Autodrome campus would look much better if someone could be bothered to finish it. As you approach the circuit huge hotel and conference complexes stand part-finished and covered in dust, monuments to the fact even Dubai's rampant ambition and vast wealth isn't impervious to a global recession. It's a weird and slightly surreal setting for an F1-grade race facility, but once inside it's much like any other scratch-built modern track: tons of run-off, tall catch fencing and a maze of concrete walls.

It comes as a surprise to find there's plenty of elevation change to make things interesting, and while there aren't any truly ballsy corners there are some very tricky cambers and tightening radius turns. With a thick coating of off-season rust to shake-off I don't mind admitting trying to find the sweetest line around this technical track really makes my brain hurt! 

The race starts behind a course car. Not just any course car, but the Nissan JUKE-R (see evo 167), which looks brutal even in the company of GT3 Lamborghinis, Ferrari's and its cousin, the JRM NISMO GT-R. I'm due in the #120 NIssan third, after my team mates Tetsuya Tanaka (a veteran Japanese GT500 racer who is every bit as as cool - and mad - as you'd hope) and Humaid Masaood, a local hero who successfully raced a Lola LMP1 in the States last year. I'm not complaining as the ambient temperature will be dropping as the sun begins to set.

With 400+bhp, slicks, wings and a sequential Quaife transmission to bang up and down the gears the GT4 370Z is a surprisingly physical car to drive. Upshifts are clutchless, but not flat-shifts, so you have to ease-off the throttle ever-so slightly to unload the 'box. Likewise there's no 'blipper' on the downshift so you have to heel-and-toe every time. Coupled to the fact you never get a moment's rest during the lap there's no doubting each 38-lap stint is tough on both car and driver. I spend much of the first stint shouting at myself for being so unfit, but still love being back in the thick of it so early in the season.

Nights are long in the desert. In fact the Dubai 24H boasts the longest period of darkness in 24H racing, with the sun setting at around 1830 and refusing to rise for the best part of 12 hours. Being a modern circuit there are some areas of the track that are well lit. Indeed much of the course has some level of lighting, but if anything it feels like that awkward phase before your eyes and headlights truly begin to work in the dark. With plenty of faster and slower traffic to contend with, night stints here are intense, albeit for very different reasons to the Nürburgring or Silverstone 24H races.

The #120 370Z has the pace to tilt for a podium finish in the SP3 class and we're making good progress for just such a result when frustratingly we encounter transmission issues during the night. The RJN guys soon have the 'box dropped on the pit garage floor and another installed, so we set about climbing back up the order. Then Masaood encounters more gearbox issues, which require another change. It's a helpless feeling watching the timing screen as hard-won places are lost, but watching the mechanics man-handle a red-hot gearbox and sustain painful burns, scrapes and bruises in the process means you can't let your head drop.

We grind out the laps until sunrise, the car feeling faster and stronger with every passing lap. You don't want to wish your rivals ill, but at the same time I can't help but wondering if or when some of the other SP3 cars will suffer mechanical maladies. Some do encounter problems, but realistically we know we're going for a finish, rather than a podium. No shame in that, but it's a bitter race of what might have beens.

RJN team principle Bob Neville puts me in the car for the final stint-and-a-half. It's an honour to be trusted to take the car to the end, but with the race finishing at 1400 it means driving through the fiercest heat of the day. To make matters worse I broke my helmet's drinks attachment earlier in the race, so won't be able to replace lost fluids during the 50-lap stint. As I feared half an hour from the finish I'm shot to pieces. Gasping for air and wringing in sweat I have to bring the car in and hand over to Tanaka-san. Despite the unscheduled stop we finish 38th overall and 10th in class.

And the GT Academy boys? They take an impressive 3rd in the SP2 class (Bob ran the cars to different specs in the hope of two podiums and to stop us racing each other!) and 26th overall. It's just reward for the tireless efforts of the team and a great result for Lucas Ordonez, Jordan Tresson, Jann Mardenborough and Brian Heitkotter, who all drove flawlessly throughout the race.