Hani Joudi 
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Halfway through a scintillating 20th Anniversary Michelin 24H DUBAI, Dinamic GT’s Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) held the overall lead of the race under night skies at Dubai Autodrome with an unpredictable battle for supremacy between Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-AMG set to rage to the chequered flag.
Race one of the 24H SERIES Middle East Trophy has certainly delivered tremendous competition, and its fair share of drama too across all classes, over the course of the first 12 hours from the impressive grid of 63 cars – just under half of those in the headline GT3 class. At the rolling start at 13.00 local time on Saturday, Alexey Nesov judged his launch perfectly to rocket from pole in the Pure Rxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R (992). Gabriele Piana, in the Pro-Am Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO, wasn’t prepared to tuck-in though and dived outside at Turn One. Side-by-side through the first sequence of corners, Piana boldly went through and he opened a lead of over three seconds within 10 minutes. The most impressive start among the front-runners in GT3 actually came from the Paradine Competition BMW M4 GT3 EVO, Toby Sowery slicing through from eighth on the grid – the Am class pole – into the overall top three midway through lap one. By lap six Sowery was into second ahead of the Pure Rxcing car, and he was duly followed through past the Porsche by the AlManar Racing by Team WRT BMW M4 EVO of Max Hesse. On lap 18, almost 40 minutes into the race, Sowery smartly passed Piana for the overall lead and then, through traffic on lap 20, Hasse moved ahead of the Mercedes for second to make it a BMW M4 one-two. With just half a second between the lead duo as the end of hour one neared, Hesse made his move on lap 28 to pass Sowery and started to pull away. In hour two a Code 60 period was called after an incident out of the last corner, involving the 992 class No.990 JBR Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992), but when racing resumed another Code 60 was required just 30 seconds later. In an attempt to avoid a slowing Era Motorsport Ferrari 296 GT3, Frederic Jousset made heavy contact with wall on the approach to Turn Three in the Team Motopark Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO. Racing resumed again halfway through hour three with Winward Racing leading overall and Pro-Am, Sergey Stolyarov at the wheel, just ahead of Thomas Kiefer in the Dinamic GT Porsche. |
