The #3 Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 driven by Khaled Al Qubaisi, Sean Edwards, Jeroen Bleekemolen, and Thomas Jäger led a Mercedes podium sweep at the 2012 Dubai 24 Hours, setting a new distance record of 628 laps, 20 more than the old record.
The victory was the first 24-hour endurance race win for each of the drivers, and the first major endurance race victory for the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3.
Radio Le Mans spoke with the winning drivers after the race. Jeroen Bleekemolen said, ““It was such a hard race. With the regulations, not being able to pull away if we could, if we had the pace—It was really close right until the end. I am really pleased with what we’ve done—the guys worked very hard, very good pit stops, the drivers made no mistakes. It feels really good.”
“Awesome! Thanks to everyone on the whole team, all the drivers, the car, everyone performed flawlessly and got the victory,” said Sean Edwards. “I think it is the first for everyone in the car—their first overall victory in a 24-hour race. Amazing stuff!”
Thomas Jäger said, “We showed that the SLS AMG GT3 is very fast, reliable car. We have three cars on the podium, so it is a big success for AMG and all of us as a team, and for Black Falcon, so we are really happy.”
The winning drivers led 15 of the 24 hours, and the final seven hours, eventually finishing two laps ahead of the second-placed No. 6 Heico Motorsport Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, and another lap ahead of the No. 16 Heico Mercedes in third.
The winning drivers had to overcome heat, traffic, and a short sandstorm, but the hardest test came from the 2011-winning Saudi Falcons by Schubert BMW Z4 GT3 which led the race for three hours ran in the top three for most of the rest of the race.
The Saudi Falcon Schubert car lost ten minutes to an electronics failure with three-and-a-half hours to go, and spent the rest of the race chasing a podium position. Edward Sandström made up huge chunks of time in the final 21 minutes following a Code 60 (full course caution, essentially,) finally spinning off the track in an all-or-nothing passing attempt two corners from the finish line on the final lap.
Next: Class Results
Class Results
73 cars in six classes took the green flag at 2 p.m. on Friday Jan. 13 and most of them were still competing 24 hours later.
The fastest class, A6, was essentially FIA GT3; 997 was, unsurprisingly, a class for Porsche 997 variants. SP2 and SP3 were basically GT4 over and under 3.5 liters displacement, while A2 and A5 were small and smaller sports and touring cars.
The A6 class filled the top of the time chart, but the No. 116 Optimum Motorsports Ginetta G50 won the SP3 class, finishing ahead of all the other classes, including the supposedly faster 997 and SP2 cars. The Optimum Ginetta came back from being 12th in class after a pair of collisions to finish 14th overall, 68 laps behind the leading Mercedes..
Finishing 17th, the Carworld Motorsport Porsche 977 GT3 Cup won the 997 class, completing 550 laps, 21 more than its nearest competitor.
SP2 was a battlefield, not just because it featured a Viper, a ‘Vette, a mustang, and a few tube-framed specialty cars, but because so many of these cars collided with other cars. In the end it came down to the tube-framed Las Moras Racing Renault Megane Trophy and the VDS Racing Adventures Ford Mustang GT3.
The Mustang took the lead when the Megane ran out of gas on the track, and lost it later when a collision forced a pit stop and serious rebuilding. The VDS crew even swapped out the transaxle in an effort to keep the car running and in the hunt. Ultimately the Megane finished 18th, completing 550 laps, while the Mustang could only manage 537.
A2 started out as the province of the No. 80 Besaplast Racing BMW Mini. The car led easily for 18 hours, then lost time in the pits and lost the class lead to the No. 57 Lap57 Racing Honda Integra Type R. The Besaplast crew clawed their way back into the class lead by the end of the 22nd hour, and held on to finish 25th, completing 533 laps. The Lap57 Honda finished one lap down.
A5 was a race-long battle between the No. 50 Kuepperracing BMW E46 Coupe and the No. 51 Le Duigou BMW 130I Cup. The Kuepperracing car led the first half of the race, but tire troubles set it back, allowing the Le Duigou BMW to surge ahead. The pair finished 35th and 36th, with the Le Duigou machine completing 495 laps to the Kuepperracing BMWs 487.
Next: “How to Use a Lambo” AwardThe “How to Use a Lambo” Award
Reiter Engineering’s Peter Kox deserves special mention for injecting excitement into the race. Along with giving Reiter a solid 24-hour endure victory, Kox started the race on a crazy note by blasting past the all–Ferrari front row to lead the first lap. Kox lost the lead on the second lap but he started things off right.
With four hours left to go, Kox set the race’s fastest lap at 2:01.921. “I wanted to prove that the Reiter Lamborghini Gallardo was still fast at the end of 23 hours of racing,” he told Radio Le Mans.
The Reiter Lamborghini finished eighth, 32 laps off the pace, so Kox didn’t collect any hardware, which is a shame; he deserved some kind of award for creating excitement.
Unique Event, Unique Rules
The Dubai 24 Hours is growing in stature. From a regional club race it has grown to attract some heavyweight teams. So far the race organizers, Creventic BV from the Netherlands, have held on to the club-racing roots, by enforcing targeted lap times and handing out penalties for drivers who went too fast.
The event uses a system similar to that used in bracket racing, a form of very popular form of mostly privateer drag racing: each driver sets a qualifying time and that time becomes his or her reference time. Race laps cannot exceed that time. Drivers can choose to qualify very fast and incur weight, ride height, and fuel-fill restrictions, or to qualify more slowly and set a reference time which, through a balance of performance and economy, will bring victory.
In most racing series there are teams funded by “gentleman drivers,” who earn the right to lose seconds per lap by paying for the team. Creventic hopes that with its system, those rich privateers won’t hurt the team’s performance so much, because everyone will be limited. The idea seems to be not to drive away the much-needed money in a quest for outright performance—broke is not particularly fast.
This form of performance balancing gives privateers a chance to compete on level ground with international endurance stars, but it also changes the nature of the race: during the closing laps, teams which needed to make up ground couldn’t push hard; they had to try to race right up to the prescribed limit, not to the limit of performance.
This generated a lot of opinions from fans, drivers, and journalists. Most, predictably, wanted to see no limits on performance. The whole idea of “driving too fast” in a race seemed silly. Others suggested a GT-Pro and GT-Am class such as the World Endurance Championship will use. This might alienate some privateers, who would no longer be competing for overall wins, but it might attract more fans and thus more sponsors.
Some defended the idea, noting that some form of performance balancing is almost always used to create good racing, and this system was designed to do just that: create good racing. The format possibly attracts more privateers, which ensures the health of the event (factory teams are great when they are around but factory support is notoriously fickle.)
On top of this, Craventic uses almost a “Run what you brung” class system. Almost everything can be squeezed in somewhere, from tube framed, single-series cars to small diesel-powered prototypes to GT3 Ferraris to Hondas and Hyundais. This gives the event a unique character, and could be a huge attraction for fans.
In the end, it comes down to one thing: do the fans enjoy the show? If racing fans can put aside preconceptions and embrace the Dubai system for what it is, they can they see if the system produces racing they can enjoy.
Whether or not the event changes to more common scoring rules or keeps its current approach, the Dubai 24 is the first race of the season; it is a 24-hour race; it is a great place for drivers to tune up for the season and teams and factories to test their latest creations. This is an event that seems destined to grow.
The eighth Dubai 24 Hours is already scheduled for Jan. 10–13, 2013. Endurance racing fans should tune in to watch the system in action.
