There were several stand out performances during the 2015 Dubai 24 Hours, few more so though than the top two finishers in A6-Am, the Dragon Racing Ferrari and Nissan GT Academy Team RJN Nissan GTR both running to a set of rules that meant they could not regularly better a 2:04 lap time whilst the Pro class cars around them could lap 3-4 seconds per lap faster when possible without penalty.
For the Ferrari to make it to a heady third place overall was an extraordinary result, and a credit to the whole team: Rob Barff, Matt Griffin, Jordan Grogor and Mohammed Jawa were mighty.
Possibly an even more extraordinary result though came from the #23 Nissan GTR NISMO GT3, the additional factor here of course is the experience levels of the drivers with the ‘old hand’ role played here by Florian Strauss, a racer whose career started a while year ago!
Alongside the German were mustered a group of 2014 GT Academy winners and it looks like (ironically) Rob Barff (seen below with Nic Hamman) and the rest of the Nissan GT Academy team have chosen well again.
There were particularly good performances from Gaetan Paletou, Nic Hamman and Ricardo Sanchez. Look for those names to pop up on entry lists elsewhere soon!
The NISMO TV crew meanwhile came up with this rather lovely full race time-lapse. I can see myself in there somewhere, looking a bit knackered at about 3am and staring sleepily at the timing screen!
None of that should take away from the continuing high standards that differentiate the Black Falcon team from much of the competition. The second team car was eliminated in an accident but the #2 car rumbled on unchallenged and untroubled. It should be noted too that the team came home with the 997 (Porsche Cup) class win too in convincing style.
That’s three overall wins in four years for the team, and first wins for all four drivers, Abdulaziz Al-Faisal, Yelmer Buurman, Oliver Webb and Hubert Haupt
Chasing the German team hard were a pair of British outfits, Second overall was good news for Ram Racing, and helped cement a now near certain full season effort in the 24H Series.
Their brand new Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 looked strong throughout the event and came home with barely a scratch.
Also always in the mix was the KPM Motorsport Aston Martin, Paul White the car owner and Gentleman driver initially planning to run the race just with Stefan Mucke but later opted to add Jonny Adam after a bout of pre-Christmas flu took the edge off his race preparation.
The Aston had some niggling problems (failed air jack and a broken right rear hub) that cost some valuable time, enough to drop the car out of the battle for the overall podium, but the pace throughout was impressive, expected of course from the Pros but Paul White too took the fight to the opposition.
One man who didn’t even start was Dan Welch, the Brit the luckless victim of a nasty incident on Friday that saw his #62 Porsche hit very hard by an out of control Isaac Tutumlu, the #15 Glorax Ferrari had lost it under braking on someone else’s oil, later losing his cool on social media, and Welch was in the path of the Ferrari, heading backwards for the barrier.
http://instagram.com/p/xmxxpKvZcV/
Initial reports that Dan was OK have proved inaccurate, in fact he suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung in an impact that ripped off the right front corner of the Porsche and punctured the fuel cell.
The GP3 (GT4) class saw an all British GT podium, Optimum Motorsport fielded the only Ginetta G55 in this year’s race and took the class win, leading the class for some 16 hours.
Ade Barwick, Bradley Ellis, Euan Hankey and Salih Yoluc finished in the top 20 overall and well clear of the remaining class podium finishers, a still fine effort by the Speedworks squad to come home 2,3 with the team’s G50 Ginetta coming home ahead of their Aston.
Finally, as has traditionally been the case the 24H Series announced the date of next year’s 24 Hours of Dubai immediately after this year’s race, the race will take place effectively a week later on 15-16 January.
