The 24 Hours of Dubai was run last weekend and left many hearts broken. Those with grit and a bit of good luck left with a smiling. But both promised to be back next year! Luckily motorsport fans could follow it via live feed and Radio Le Mans. Great overall coverage with always entertaining, helpful insights and full of dry humour.
Personally I had a special interest in the “enduro” since I know the nuances of the Dubai Autodrome pretty well having raced it, in day light. Of course, the city of Dubai, aka “The Center of Now”, has a great energy which spills over to the nearby track, so much so that the race had no shortage of UK volunteers. Of course, the warm weather helps.
But back to the race. Audi was well represented with a great deal of teams fielding the all new Audi R8 LMS in various classes. Laurens Vanthoor, Alain Ferté, Michael Meadows and Stuart Leonard kept out of harms way and drove a tough race to bring the #19 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT first to the checkered flag.
Head of Audi Sport customer racing, Romolo Liebchen, said after the win: “This is definitely a dream come true, because, I am not 100 per cent, but I think it was the last big endurance race we had yet to win with our GT3 car. Now we have done it and now we have won everything.”
The overall second place position went to Black Falcon with their #16 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 driven by Abdulaziz Al Faisal, Oliver Webb, Adam Christodoulou, Oliver Morley and Frank Montecalvo. The fact that the #16 was their backup car, shows the team’s resilience after a fire burned down their main entry on Thursday, causing them to start at the back of the field. That’s 97 cars ahead of them!
Other notable drives. The #28 Audi R8 of Land Motorsport inherited the lead after a Ferrari crashed hard during the night. They kept everyone at bay for some 200 laps until gearbox problems forced them to retire. Other notable retirees were #27 SPS Automotive-Performance Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 and the Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3, which was leading the race with just 20 minutes to go. Technical issues.
As with any endurance race, there were several accidents. Fellow Dutchman Jeroen Blekemolen was in second place and was about lap a slower car when they touched, forcing him to retire. Not so fortunate was Thomas Martinsson, driving for Primus Racing. The Sweed had a coming together with his Ginetta and the then race-leading Scuderia Praha Ferrari, which left him in the hospital with a couple of broken bones.
Throughout the 24 hours, race control had a strong grip on race infractions and the like. Many penalties were handed out and it went as far as “banning” Scuderia Praha from competing in the next leg of the series for its role in the accident with Martinsson.
From all of us motorsport fans in the Caribbean, we applaud the organizers, race control, timekeeping, marshals and scrutineers for a great race. It was a hard and long race with many difficult and dangerous accident-clearing moments, especially for the marshals.
Photo credit: Motorsport.com, gtspirit.com
FULTROT Magazine 