While Formula One races have become an accepted sport in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. over the past few years, the number of Middle Eastern drivers involved in the sport directly has been invisible.

But, thanks to two determined young men taking the lead, changes are on the way.

One Driver

Saad Ali, a 28-year old IT specialist in spite of being a college dropout, is from Pakistan and has been paying his dues in the racing world for almost a decade. He began gratifying his need for speed in the same way most young Pakistanis do: illegal street races through the city with police officers in chase.

With no race tracks for adults in Pakistan, Ali has faced major hurdles to achieving his dream. But, overcoming impossible odds has only inspired Ali to find his own solutions. After attending the Bahrain Formula BMW Racing Center School, he has been racing in the Formula BMW and Formula Renault circuits.

Chasing a dream is never easy

The main obstacle to racing anything more than go-karts is finances. Thus far, he has been investing in himself using money from his main job at Swiftclick and producing his own documentary films. As a result of this determined effort, Saad Ali competed in his very first circuit race taking the podium at the Formula Gulf 1000 in 2014.

His next step is to prevail in Formula 3, GP3 and GP2 as he steps his way up to become one of the select 22 drivers competing in Formula One.
Ali is not just interested in making his own dream come true. He is pitching major companies to build Formula One tracks in Pakistan as part of his effort to bring the sport to his nation and generate a safe place for the youth to compete without jeopardizing the public roadways.

"There have been accidents, some really bad in which people have died, but this thing goes on as you cannot restrict youth," he explained.

Taking third place in the Formula Gulf 1000 races twice in the same weekend was his first major milestone to reaching his goal to become the first Pakistani driver in Formula One history.

In keeping with the view of making Formula One racing accessible in the region and hopefully inspiring young people to set their sights on this sport, a leading binary options broker, named Binary Uno is in the final stages of sending out a donation for building a new race circuit in Saudi Arabia, which is planned to be open by the end of 2018.

One Engineer

His name is Muhammad Usman Zafar (pictured). His will be the name to remember as marking the first Saudi Arabian to join the Infiniti Placement Design Engineer (Vehicle Design) team in the U.K. starting in September.