Friday, January 10, 2014

Halfway through the Dubai 24 Hours

The first endurance race of the 2014 motorsports season has reached it's halfway point and has already seen a massive development.

The two-time defending race winning #1 Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon Mercedes-Benz driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen, Bernd Schneider, Khaled Al Qubaisi and Andreas Simonsen has experienced a devastating electrical failure after leading the race by three laps at one point. The team now finds themselves in twenty-first, sixteen laps back.

The #30 Ram Racing Ferrari of Jan Magnussen, Johnny Mowlen, Matt Griffin and Cheerag Ayra lead the #4 Fach Auto Tech Porsche of Sebastian Asch, Martin Ragginger, Connor de Phillippi and Otto Klohs by a little over a lap. The #76 SX Team Schubert BMW of Paul Dalla Lana, Dirk Werner, Claudia Hürtgen, Bill Auberlen and Dane Cameron is third, two laps back.

The #20 Stadler Motorsport Porsche of Christian Engelhart, Mark Ineichen, Rolf Ineichen, Marcel Matter and Adrian Amstutz is fourth with the #2 Black Falcon Mercedes driven by Bleekemolen, Al Qubaisi, Abdulaziz Bin Turki Al Faisal, Hubert Haupt and Adam Christodoulou rounding out the top five.

The #38 Münnich Motorsport Mercedes of René Münnich, Marc Basseng and Rob Huff were leading earlier in the race but have dropped down to sixth. The top A6-Am car is the #88 Dragon Racing Ferrari driven by Stuart Hall, Rob Barff, Dan Norris-Jones and Bassam Kronfli in seventh. The pole-sitting V8 Racing Corvette of Nicky Pastorelli, Wolf Nathan, Danny Werkman, Rick Abresch and Alex Van 't Hoff is eighth.

The #458 GT Corse Ferrari is ninth with Pierre Kaffer, Pierre Ehret, Marco Seefried, Alexander Mattschull and Vadim Kogay making up it's driver line-up. Rounding out the top ten is the #27 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW of Henry Walkenhorst, Ralf Oeverhaus, Daniela Schmid, Jens Richter and Claudia Hürtgen.

The top Porsche 997 GT3 Cup car is the #44 Black Falcon entry of Arturo Devigus, Andres Fjordbach, Will Friedrichs, Burkard Kaiser and Vladimir Lunkin.

The #123 Nissan GT Academy 370Z of Lucas Ordóñez, Miguel Faisca, Florian Strauss, Stanislav Aksenov and Nikolas McMillen lead the SP2 class.

Other class leaders are the #154 Nova Race Ginetta G50 (SP3), #62 JR Motorsport BMW (A5), #47 Motorsport Services SEAT (A3T), #57 LAP57 Racing Team Honda (A2) and #125 Recy Racing Team BMW.

Two notable retirements from the A6 class are the #5 Spirit of Race Ferrari driven by Gianmaria Bruni, Toni Vilander, Alexander Talkanitsa, Sr and Alexander Talkanitsa, Jr. and the #7 Craft Racing Aston Martin of Stefan Mücke, Darren Turner, Darryl O'Young, Frank Yu and Tomonobu Fujii.

Coverage of the Dubai 24 Hours can be found here.