Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon missed out on a hat-trick of wins at the Dunlop 24 Hour Dubai race, which was eventually won by Stadler Motorsport.
Local star Khaled Al Qubaisi believes his team would have won “easily” had they not lost their fastest car to an exhaust problem.
The Emirati had a point considering the two-time reigning champions were 10 laps ahead when the car came into the pits and the team eventually lost by six laps.
The onus then fell on the lesser equipped second car to carry the weight that was superbly piloted from its original 12th position into third.
While Team Abu Dhabi were clearly disappointed to miss out on a third straight win, they had plenty of consolation in the performance of their second car.
“We’re just relieved to have made it to the podium to be honest,” the Emirati told Sport360°. “We were lucky with all the incidents that happened to us just to get in the top three after we had to use car No2.
“We had our fair share of problems, spending a lot of time in the pits trying to repair the car. We lost at least 10 laps in the pits. It’s a consolation, we’re disappointed for sure but you can never prepare for technical faults and technical mishaps.
“We saw with car No1 that it was in a league of its own, it was really flying and it would have easily finished the race three or four laps ahead.”
With the laps running out, Qubaisi endured a minor scare with about half an hour left when he came off the track. Their commanding lead of fourth place ensured that the mishap went unpunished. The Emirati driver insisted the mistake came from over exuberance rather than fatigue.
“No, that was just from pushing too hard to see if I could grab second place,” Qubaisi said. “But the guy in front didn’t make it easy, so I was pushing too hard and the balance of the car wasn’t in great shape by then.”
With Team Abu Dhabi missing out, it fell to Swiss team Stadler in their Porsche to go for the title. After a scramble for places in the first three quarters of the race that saw 29 lead changes among nine teams, the Swiss came in three-lap winners to become the first team from Switzerland to win the race.
Rolf Ineichen of Stadler put his team’s success down to their ability to strike while the iron was hot, taking advantage of the slip ups around them.
“This is incredible,” said the Swiss driver. “It was a great race. We recovered from a practice accident. We drove steadily and when it mattered we took command.
“It was very tense throughout because there some big teams chasing us. It is a fantastic victory for our team.”
Coming up behind Stadler (603 laps) was the German team ALLINKL. com Munich Motorsport who finished with 600 laps, three laps ahead of Team Abu Dhabi.
A businessman by day, Ineichen revealed that he and his team harboured no expectations of victory at any point of the race.
“Even when were ahead we never thought we’d win,” said the Swiss. “We had a bad qualifying where I think we started 14th. Most of us in the team are gentleman drivers, we do it for fun."
