Dubai 24 hours 2018

Team Black Falcon notches up another Dubai 24 hour win to make 4 wins for them. TCE race was won by Team Engstler.

Team Black Falcon has won the 2018 edition of the Dubai 24 hours. Black Falcon took the win with 2 laps over the nearest car and now has 4 wins at the twice around the clock desert classic, more than any other team has at the Dubai 24 hours and now has provided Mercedes the equal amount of wins, also giving the AMG GT3 it’s first win at the event. #2 Black Falcon squad with Yelmer Buurman, Hubert Haupt, Abdulaziz Al Faisal and Gabriele Piana on board never had the outright pace but did have the most consistent pace through out the night and traffic to bring them to front of the field again after to slipping down at the start.

Black Falcon were actually on their way to a 1-2 finish when at hour 20, the #1 Hofor racing Mercedes had a missed braking spot coming into turn 10 and took out both himself and the #3 Black Falcon car which had been in a battle for the lead for majority of the race.

Manthey Racing #12 porsche was in second overall after being around the top 5 all race and through out the night. A late race battle with the GRT Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini in the dying hours of the race left the Porsche on top as the Lamborghini with Rolf Ineichen behind the wheel spun from pressure from the Manthey Porsche. Manthey finished only 5.2seconds ahead of the GRT team.
GRT #964 had a long recovering battle through the field after multiple punctures for no explained reason which took its toll on the Lamborghinis overall race. The team were really left wondering what could have been? to recover from 66th to finish on the podium is an achievement in its self but knowing you had the pace to win overall would’ve been harder for the team to admit.

Last Years winners Herberth Motorsport looked mightily fast in the early evening into the night but only to run in to suspension issues to drop them down the order, lowest position of 20th to fight back to 10th but not enough to claim the A6 AM win as that was taken by the #16 SPS Automotive AMG GT3 who also took that 4th position overall. A6-AM had Multiple leaders throughout the race but a lot fell by the wayside with problems as did the mentioned Herberth Motorsport as well as another long time leader of the class the #25 HTP motorsport machine who had oil leak problems towards the end of the race dropping them down the classification. All these cars with problems promoted the #9 BWT mucke motorsport Audi who had never completed a 24 hour race but you wouldn’t be able to tell with their strong first finish.

For the first time in history this year the Dubai 24 hours had another completely different race within the overall race. This being the TCE which is a mixture of TCR and SP3 vehicles which are so closely balanced to one another. The win was taken by the #130 Liqui Moly Team Engstler Volkswagen, behind in the class on the podium was #129 LMS engineering Seat Leon TCR only 2 laps off the lead and #115 The Bonk Motorsport Audi in 3rd on the podium for the Dubai TCE race.
polar opposite to the beginning of this race after qualifying and the SP3 Ginettas stole the show and swept the starting grid, but again it proves in endurance racing that nothing is as simple as what we see.
Ginettas may not have won overall in the TCE race but CWS cars dominated the SP3 class podium #178 taking the class win and #278 coming home in 3rd, with the #238 Lamera Cup splitting the Ginettas on the podium.

Congratulations to Team Black Falcon on another win at this Gulf endurance classic and congratulations to all teams for completing one of the more challenging endurance races of the whole season.

Words and Images by Michael Widdowson
www.mjwmedia.net