Dubai: Shaikh Juma Al Maktoum accompanied by ATCUAE president Mohammad Bin Sulayem, waved the UAE flag at 2pm on Friday to signal the start of the 11th edition of the Hankook 24H Dubai race - and with it unleashing 98 cars in the epic endurance contest at the Autodrome.
After hogging the top three spots on the grid in qualifying on Thursday, Audi set themselves up as the team to beat with their potent R8 LMS. They duly led the early stages in formation and clearly signalled their intent with the pole winning C.Abt Audi R8 LMS of Christer Jons, Andreas Weishaupt, Isaac Tutumlu-Lopez, Mattias Henkola and Daniel Abt leading at the start.
There is no love lost between the teams in the Audi camp and they set the tone by battling it out from the moment the UAE flag was waved.
Chasing the C.Abt Racing Audi R8 LMS was the Land Motorsport Audi of Marc Basseng, Christopher Mies, Carsten Tilke and Connor de Phillippi who kept up the pressure and moved up into the lead on lap two.
On lap eight, the C.Abt car with Jons in the cockpit restored the initial order, but the end of lap eleven, Land Motorsport’s Mies came to the fore again.
Watching the action ahead, in third place, was the Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi R8 LMS of Alain Ferté, Michael Meadows, Stuart Leonard and Laurens Vanthoor and the Optimum Motorsport car of Flick Haigh, Ryan Ratcliffe, Joe Osborne and Frank Stippler in fourth.
Behind the quartet, and best of the rest, was the Abu Dhabi Racing by Black Falcon Mercedes AMG GT3 led by local hero and Hankook 24H Dubai double winner Khaled Al Qubaisi sharing the cockpit with Jeroen Bleekemolen, Maro Engel, Hubert Haupt and Indy Dontje.
Several teams and 32 drivers based in the UAE are also in the field competing in one of the nine classes which are ‘races within the race’, a characteristic of the Hankook Endurance Series.
Although 100 cars were expected to make the start, only 98 made it, as accidents in practice eliminated the Sorg Rennsport BMW M235i Racing and the Red Camel MARC Mazda 3 V8. Nevertheless it was still a record size field for the race in Dubai, and easily the biggest race of its kind in Asia.
The race was set to continue through the night and into Saturday, when at 2pm the chequered flag will wave to bring proceedings to an end ahead of the podium presentations.
Entry for spectators is free throughout the race.
