Live from the Dubai 24 Hour Part V

The seventh annual Dubai 24h race is over. OVER! And you’ve missed out on a lot of very excellent stuff.

Luckily, we’ve deprived ourselves of sleep, food and medical care to drag you from the internet to the Middle East and into our eyes. Which actually sounds a bit weird. But you know what we mean. Hopefully.

Anyway.

Click on to see what’s happened since our last update.

If you think race tracks are awash with rubber marbles during the F1, you should see the Dubai Autodrome after 24 hours of racing. Off the racing line, the track looks like a big, lethal abacus.

The sheer breadth of mechanical ability across the field means racing’s always entertaining – and occasionally hilarious. The Pizza Company Racing Team’s Honda Integra DC-5, Le Duigou Racing’s 3.0-litre 1-series (with five doors, as it goes), and the #87 Suzuki Swift play an endlessly entertaining game of snakes and ladders.

German manufacturers have absolutely destroyed the field this year – for several hours, nine out of the top ten cars were built there.

Dusty sand plagued racing early this morning. Which is more surprising than it seems considering the city’s in a giant great big desert.

The Autodrome’s thoroughfare’s right next to the grandstand, and as cars returned to watch the closing laps, they kicked up a masses of the stuff, which blew onto the track and into the pit.

As you’d imagine, said grandstand flanks the home straight. As cars barrelled down it they took the dust with them and deposited it when they slowed down for turn one, which made it massively slippy. Great for the spectators, though – there was some spectacular dori-dori.

Sunrise over a race track – it has the uncanny effect of making you feel very happy indeed. 

As the first of the cars came pitted at sunrise, the temperature began its ascent from 15 degrees centigrade to 24.

It gave us the first glimpse of how they’d survived the night, too – the #61 Seat Leon Supercopa faired remarkably well.

It was a good day to be a racing SLS. More on that later…

The morning after the night before – Exagon Engineering’s 997 GT3R suffered major rear-end damage…

…as did Gulf’s rather delicious Aston Martin Vantage N24 GT24.

Luckily, the team had many, many rolls of gaffer tape. In fact, save for the pit girls, very few things and people weren’t covered in gaffer tape.

This man wishes to remain anonymous. He’s in charge of monitoring the 40mph speed limit in the pitlane. “It’s for health and safety reasons – you can create a lot of problems with sparks and debris if you don’t observe the limit”.

Just as we began to scoffing at his bureaucracy, there was the unmistakable sound of naked metal on tarmac…

…to our compound amazement, car 22 – Tsunami RT’s Porsche 997GT3 Cup car – wobbled past on three wheels, occasionally loosing its balance and dipping onto the brake discs. There were sparks, there was debris, there was a man with a very worthy job.

Our mystery human GATSO liked to fill his time between busting pitlane hoons and deftly making points by checking the speed of the racers. This made us like him more.

Fach Auto Tech employed a unique method to cooling its 997 GT3 R’s driver – first, a small lady wafted cool in by vigorously opening and closing the door. The a man wondered up and switched his leaf blower – replete with gaffer tape – onto the drivers face.

You’ve probably heard a lot about Spain’s Lucas Ordoñez – he’s the bloke that won Nissan’s GT Academy, propelling him from Gran Turismo gamer to actual., real-life racing driver.

In this year’s event, he drove car #100 – a 370Z – along with fellow GT Academy drivers, Jordan Tresson, Bryan Heitkotter and Jann Mardenborough. But was a car full of gamers – a racing first - a bit… ambitious?

Lucas says: “If I’m worried about other gamers being worse drivers [than other drivers], I would have a problem. The other guys are great drivers and put in a very good performance.”

Lucas adds: “I’ve had a great race in Dubai. I always enjoy 24-hour events, even though there is a lot of pressure for everybody involved in a gamer car.

"The faster cars make the race a little bit confusing, too – many have more power, but you don’t know how good the drivers are. They overtake on the straight, then you overtake them in the corners. It is a great challenge and I had no big moments so I am happy with my performance.”

RESULTS

1st Mercedes SLS Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon

2nd Mercedes SLS by Helico Motorsport

3rd Mercedes SLS by Helico Motorsport

The all-gamer Nissan 370Z placed 26th overall and 3rd in its class, the Suzuki Swift finished in 58th and 9th in its class and Racing Divas’ Renault Clio RS Cup scooped 4th place in its class and a staggering 39th overall.

Racing celebrations erred on the interesting – throughout the 35-minute ceremony this group of tradition Emiratis performed a Hrbia song and dance routine.

Under the helmet there’s winning driver and UAE native, Khaled Al Qubaisi. He drove alongside Jeroen Bleekemolen from Holland, Thomas Jager from Germany and England’s own Sean Edwards.

Can you imagine Lewis Hamilton celebrating a race win by straddling a spitting, humped mammal?

Where else in the world would you find camels, supercar racers and traditional Emirate baton twirlers other than Dubai?

So there you have it, TG.commers. That was the Dubai 24 Hours. If you didn’t know anything about it before we hope you do now.

It’s vastly different from the rest of the enduro races crop, and the winners get to ride a camel. But if certainly deserves more recognition than it currently gets.

If you fancy filling some of those empty seats, hop on a plane and give it a go next year.