Like any 12-year old, the Hankook 24 Hours of Dubai is reaching a crossroads as it grows into its teenage years and judging by some rumblings around the pits over the weekend, there appears to be some angst brewing.
I’ve been a part of every race and I’ve watched it develop from a family-friendly, club-style event into something that still maintains its childhood innocence but now also takes on a larger, more globally important role.
For a year or two now, some drivers at the pointy end have said they’re not happy with the amount of overtaking required and the number of slow cars which make up the field; even calling for a separate event that will take the tiny tots into a race of their own.
With 92 cars on the grid it’s one of the biggest motor racing fields in the world and you could argue that case for them when you see the quickest GT3 Porsche 911s, Mercedes GTs and Audi R8s monstering the helpless Honda Integras and Peugeot 208s, lapping them before they’ve even completed the second of what will be nearly 600 tours of the Autodrome.
The speed of the outright contenders is nothing short of phenomenal as these thinly disguised, purpose-built race cars cover the 5.34km circuit, 17 and a half seconds quicker than the back markers every lap. At the end of Saturday’s race that equated to an 82 lap difference between the winning Porsche and the Peugeot 208GTI in 46th position. Eighty two laps!
But asking for them to leave and race on someone else’s lawn is not the answer. Far from it, it’s precisely this factor which makes the Dubai 24-Hour one of the most entertaining races of the year, anywhere in the world.
This year we were lucky enough to have former Formula One drivers Jean-Eric Vergne and Robert Kubica as well as 2015 World Endurance Champion and factory Porsche 919 driver Brendon Hartley choosing to race with us.
While from a manufacturer perspective, AudiSport’s new CEO, Stephan Winkelmann flew out and spent the two full days in Audi’s hospitality so he could witness the world debut of its new RS3 LMS car. The RS3 will be campaigned around the globe this year in the new TCS championship and Audi chose Dubai to show it off to the world and hopefully get a few sales from gentleman racers.
Right now, the Dubai 24-Hour is a brilliant combination between the haves and the have nots, all racing together, sharing the same track. When you’re racing a slow car against faster machinery, the general rule is to hold your line and let the faster guy find a way through.
He always will. And that’s as true in the Dubai 24-Hour as it is for Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes trying to lap Felipe Nasr’s Sauber in an F1 GP. A quick driver will find a way past using a combination of speed and race craft. Perhaps that is something the whingers lack.
A lot of horsepower under the right foot doesn’t make you a fast driver. Being able to place your car accurately and safely to maneuver your way past slower cars who are in their own class battles is what makes a champion driver and a race winner.
Let’s leave the Dubai 24-Hour as it is, with its wonderfully full grid of diverse cars and diverse budgets, where family-run teams who live a few kms from the track and prepare their cars in Al Quoz garages can mix it with F1 stars, LeMans winners and the best and biggest budgets from Stuttgart, Ingolstadt, or Sant‘agata.
