Car Collection Motorsport take Honours in the Dubai 24 hours

The 14th Edition of the Dubai 24 hours has been won by Car Collection Motorsport, Audi’s second win in the history of the event. MS7 by WRT take 2nd place making it a 1-2 for Audi.

A smaller grid size than normal for the Dubai 24 hours, only 77 cars entered compared to recent years where we are borderline 100 entries but the quality of this years entry list especially in the A6 class has caused quite a stir of excitement and for good reason. Brand new evo versions of the Audi R8 were on display by all Audi teams, most notably Car Collection who brought 3 brand new Audi R8 LMS Evo cars to the show. They were on the pace from the start and were here a few days before testing with Rik Breukers.

Qualifying was an outright fight for pole position as it swapped between Lamborghini and Audi until late session when Mirko Bortolotti Claimed pole position with a trio of Audi’s lined up behind him.

The Grid was a hive of activity, one of the busiest I’ve seen here for a while now. Walking through became a real struggle to get through let alone pushing some of the top teams cars through to get to their hard earned grid slots. Once it all eventually became clear the cars were released onto their 2 formation laps for the race, a tradition here just due to the size of the field, it gives the cars plenty of time to get moving and arranged into their formation. The cars rounded the final corner perfectly formed for the precise moment of 3pm, as the flag dropped Bortolotti got away cleanly to maintain the lead but now with a hunting pack of Audi’s 3 wide into turn 1 trying to find any advantage possible.

Bortolotti lead the way for a while before traffic came into play and caught in bad spots on track so gave the Audi’s the upper hand and put them ahead of the GRT Lamborghini. Car collection took the lead from lap 9 and lead until the first code 60 brought out by #968 coming into contact with the wall. Most of the field came in apart from Target Racing who took their A6-AM Lamborghini into the lead of the race before handing it back to #88 Car collection.

Pole Sitter and Early leader GRT for the second year in a row had early race problems dropping the car way off the lead. The car had contact with another car out on circuit causing a right rear suspension failure. 30 minutes the team spent in the pits repairing the damage and the car was pushed right down outside the top 20.

Darkness as always was upon us quickly, if not even quicker this year. For the first time the Dubai 24 hours took a start time of 3pm instead of it’s usual 2pm start. This gave everyone 2 hours of true daylight running before the sun dropped like a stone out of the sky and darkness engulfed the circuit. With Darkness always comes problems and accidents, the inevitable incident came between turn 7 and 8 where the MP Motorsport had a coming together with the TCE race leading Ginetta of CWS putting both cars into the exposed wall.
MP Motorsport came off a lot worse, the chassis completely written off at the front end and a worry for the drivers well being. CWS would get their car back and return it back to the race but it was in the garage for over an hour completing the repairs.

Black Falcon had a race to forget, the cars seemed to struggle on outright pace in the heat with them starting just inside the top 10 but no seeming to be able to trouble the front runners with their pace. With a similar start to last year, both cars stayed out of trouble and began clawing back time pulling themselves back to the front. When darkness fell the cars really came to life and enjoyed the cooler conditions, #2 particularly began pushing and even spent time leading the race before the troubles hit.
Overheating right front brake disc, the car then was pulled into the garage and lost 25 laps repairing and fixing the problem.
#3 continued to push through the night and be close to the top spots of the race before morning troubles once again wrote the ‘red beast’ out of the race. Rear suspension failure brought the car into the pits and it would never leave the pits again after 21 hours of running they had to retire the car.

The Car Collection would then go on to Dominate the remaining time of the race, with no seeming weak link in the car and every aspect of their race running to perfection everyone was wondering if there would be a weak point or a downfall of their race. To their traffic management to pitstops, the team were completely on it.
Outright Pro drivers Christope Haase and Frédéric Vervisch were a big part of the teams pace, Dimitri Parhofer held his own and pushed his pace to match some of the pro drivers out on the circuit to never let the the #88 fall back into the grips of the chasing WRT.
The real star of the squad was the young 20 year old Hotshot Rik Breukers. Breukers spent a total of 9 and a half hours in the car in the race, it’s well over a 3rd of the race driven by himself in a team of 4 drivers, the team obviously had a lot of faith in the young driver and you can see why after the job he did.

The team pushed all the way, not wanting to give any time away at any point. Even the last pitstop where Rik climbed back on board with 1 hour 30 remaining the team were smooth and fast with once again all tyres changed and car screen cleaned before the driver change had been completed.
Rik continued to precisely balance the pace with caution and brought the car home after completing 607 laps, 560 of them were spent in the lead. Car collection truly dominated the race, it puts the team once seen as a Gentleman driver team well on the radars of the Pro teams and now written into the history books as a Dubai 24 hours winner providing Audi with their second win overall.