DUBAI: The Toyo Tires Dubai 24 hour race proved a happy hunting ground for the much-improved Saudi motor racing team Al Faisal Racing. They took home two trophies. After a magnificent display of recovery driving after a puncture and broken steering link in their BMWZ4M, they scorched over the finish line just 49 seconds behind the Land Motorsport 2 Porsche in a well won second place.
To add to the glory of a superb podium finish, the team's second entry, a BMW 320 D, finished 19th overall and winner of its class.
"It was the first time the Saudi flag had been raised at an F1A event," Prince Abdulaziz Al-Fisal told Arab News from the pits at the finish. "It was a very moving and special moment. Plans for the year are to look at other 24 hour races - perhaps Nurburgring and Budapest."
At mid-day, 22 hours into the Toyo 24 hour endurance race at the Dubai Autodrome, the Al Faisal Z4M was lying in fourth position, chasing down number three with a vengeance. "We look set for a class win," said Paul Spooner, who piloted the BMW Z4M to first place after being sideswiped and suffering a broken steering link., "But we didn't come here for that. We are after a podium finish." However, the intervention of a puncture, which spun the car backward into the crash barrier pushed the team down to fourth place from their leading slot. "Totally unforeseeable, but that's endurance racing," he said.
In the eventuality, a very good podium finish was what the Z4M team, Prince Abdulaziz, Paul Spooner, Claudia Hürtgen and Stian Sorlie, achieved.
The team's second entry, a BMW320D was leading its class and at mid-day lay in 21st position. Just out of the car Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Al-Faisal who drove the car for a large section of the night stage was enthusiastic over the telephone when he was resting in the pits. "It's really tough out there, but the car is holding up well. Staying sharp is the major challenge but that gets even harder when racing through the night." He explained that only the home straight over the grid is illuminated - the rest of the circuit is unlit. "The pressure of cars in different classes overtaking, the stress and strain and the difficulty of night driving at race speeds adds up," he said.
The team, Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, Bander Al-Esayi, Sheikh Salman Al-Khalifa and Jorg Viebahn, kept it all together and drove their reliable steed to an impressive class win.
Three-and-a-half hours into the event the race was neutralized by the "code 60" which imposes a maximum average speed of 60 km/h on the drivers after the Renault Clio of the Dutch Carworld Motorsport team (Rob Frijns, Roger Grouwels, Charlie Frijns, Pieter Dubois) hit the pit wall at high speed coming out of the final corner. Fortunately, the driver escaped unscathed, but the limited speed rule held for almost 80 minutes needed to remove the damaged car and repair the pit wall. Racing resumed at 17.55.
Half an hour later, the Autorlando Porsche 997 GT3 RSR of Italian team Autorlando Sport (Francisco Cruz Martins, Gianluca Motorsport, Richard Lietz, Allan Simonsen), while leading the race came into the pits with damage to the rear part of the car. They had held first place for most of the first four hours but were robbed of the chance of a good result after a repair stop of 45 minutes that dropped the team to 55th place. The repair works handed the lead to the Al Faisal BMW Z4M, although the Land Motorsport car was never far behind. Just after the six-hour mark, Al Faisal Racing BMW lost ten minutes due to front axle problems, dropping back to 15th overall. At the six-hour stage of the race, proceedings were dominated by the Land Motorsport Porsche (Hermann Tilke, Marc Basseng, Christian Land, Dirk Adorf) which led the Al Faisal Racing team's BMW Z4 M with the ARC Bratislava Porsche (Miroslav Konopka, Jiri Janak, Mauro Casadei, Rudiger Klos) third.
By the 21-hour mark, only one driver had had to check in at the medical center after a crash, but it the medical team reported that there was no permanent injury. Out of the 75 cars that started the race, 69 were still out on the circuit still in full hue and cry after a win.
A blistering last hour and a half with driver Claudia Hürtgen at the wheel of the pursuing Z4M slipped the Al Faisal team to second spot and contending hard for first; that was the way the race finished. Prince Abdulaziz said, "She was taking six seconds a lap of the lead car, and a tremendous performance it was."
The impressive second overall position was very close to a win indeed. The winning car, the Land Motorsport Porsche 997GT3 Cup, finished well under a minute (over 24 hours) ahead of the Al Faisal BMW. The extra pit stop to repair the puncture and body damage that chanced upon the car cost the team cost them 42 minutes. If that eventuality had not happened the story would have been very different.
But, as Paul Spooner said, "that's endurance racing."
