The first official free practice session for the Hankook 2015 Dubai 24 Hours got underway at 11:30am local time on Thursday morning, with earlier heavy fog having cleared to make way for customary Gulf sunshine and temperatures approaching 20 degrees Celsius.
Fastest of the first batch of flying laps was Nicky Pastorelli’s 2:06.371 in last year’s pole-setting V8 Racing Corvette. Stuart Hall wasn’t far behind in the Gulf Racing Lamborghini, but the times quickly dipped into the 2:04s (2:04.000 being the ‘joker time’ that cannot be exceeded by Pro-Am crews).
It wasn’t long before Bernd Schneider went fastest in the Pro-crewed Black Falcon Mercedes SLS, clocking a 2:03.436, which was then swiftly eclipsed by Lance David Arnold in the #33 SPS Performance Mercedes, who lowered the benchmark to 2:01.449.
Marcel Wagner was the quickest non-Mercedes in the early stages, going third with a 2:03.589 in on of two Fach Auto Tech Porsche GT3 cars here this weekend. However, Thomas Jaeger in the #30 Ram Racing Mercedes and Stefan Mucke in the #28 KPM Aston Martin demoted him to sixth with around 15 minutes of the session done.
Jaeger then put the Ram car fastest overall with the first sub-2:01 lap of the session – a 2:00.961 on its fourth flyer. Both Schneider and Arnold had broken into the 2:01s in their Mercedes by this point.
Looking down the classes, the fastest non-GT3 runners with 20 minutes in the bag were Manuel Metzger and Keita Sawa in the #25 and #26 Black Falcon Porsche Cup cars. Robert Lukas then went a little quicker in the #46 Forch car.
Just before midday local time, the red flags came out when Jiri Pisarik left the track at T14 in the #4 Scuderia Praha Ferrari and suffered a fairly substantial front-end impact. The Czech driver had been pushing hard, setting the fifth-fastest time overall with a 2:01.466.
At this point, Jaeger was still top of the timing screens, but Patrick Assenheimer had taken the #33 SPS Motorsport Mercedes to second and Mucke had moved the KPM Aston up to third overall. Yelmer Buurman (#2 Black Falcon Mercedes) and Marko Asmer (#10 GT Russian Mercedes) were sixth and seventh fastest respectively.
The Ferrari came back to the pit lane on a flatbed, with heavy front end damage. The driver came back via ambulance to the Medical Centre but was in the garage soon afterwards.
At seven minutes past the hour, word was received that the session would not restart “to allow time for track repairs”. The second free practice session is due to get underway at 1:15pm local time.
Stephen Errity
