Pre-race doubts fail to put 24 Hours of Dubai winners Stadler Motorsport off their stride

DUBAI // Swiss outfit Stadler Motorsport won a frenetic Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai at the Dubai Autodrome on Saturday.

Race favourites Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcons missed recording a historic treble when their Mercedes SLS was forced out of the race in the middle of the night with electrical problems.

Stadler’s Porsche, taken over the line by Rolf Ineichen, took the chequered flag with a three-lap advantage over Germany’s All-inkl.com Munnich Motorsport.

Khalid Al Qubaisi, driving the final stint in the Black Falcon’s silhouette car, finished third to ensure the Abu Dhabi outfit appeared on the podium for the third time in three seasons, albeit two steps lower than in previous years.

“This is incredible; a great race,” said Ineichen, the Swiss driver who helped his team complete 603 laps of the 5.4-kilometre circuit.

“We recovered from a practice accident, drove steadily and when it mattered we took command – although it was very tense throughout because there were some big teams chasing us. We kept it together and won. It’s a fantastic victory for our team.”

Ineichen is a gentleman driver and runs his own department store in Switzerland when not behind the wheel. He said past experience dictated that victory in the UAE was something he was never willing to consider – even after inheriting the lead in the 18th hour when Fach Auto Tech Porsche stopped on track with a gearbox issue.

“To be honest, we did not think we could win,” said Ineichen, whose Stadler team had not won a major endurance race since 1996. “Last year, we were leading here after 12 hours when we suffered a technical problem and fell back. In Barcelona, again, we were leading after 12 hours when our engine blew up, so we said ‘we will never believe it will happen, we will just fight and go for it’. And we did.”

Munnich Motorsport were understandably delighted to be on the second step of the podium after a race that saw 27 different lead changes and nine different race leaders. Marc Basseng, their German driver, hailed his Mercedes SLS’s performance.

“This is our first whole 24-hour race and to finish in second place is really a great result,” he said. “The pace of the car was good, the whole team really fought for the result and the car was very reliable.”

The same could not be said of the Black Falcons’ beleaguered Mercedes. Having started from second on the grid, the Abu Dhabi team snatched the lead from pole-sitters V8 Racing during the opening few laps as they hunted a third successive victory.

For much of the opening hour, the two teams tossed around the lead like a hot suspension spring, but, as the night drew in the race became more a battle of attrition.

It was ultimately a battle Al Qubaisi and Co lost. At just over 10 hours, with the Abu Dhabi outfit having built a sizeable lead, they began having exhaust problems and were forced to pit. When the car returned to the track – with Swede Andreas Simonsen at the wheel – they joined in 26th position. When more technical issues took hold an hour later, the car was retired and focus switched to the silhouette, Black Falcon 2.

Jeroen Bleekemolen, a Porsche Supercup champion, helped take the silhouette car through the field but any higher than third was impossible. Even that result almost evaporated when Al Qubaisi, during his final stint in the car, lost control briefly and spun into the pit wall with a little more than 30 minutes remaining.

The Emirati, whose team held a nine-minute advantage over the fourth-placed GT Corse, managed to nurse the car home to secure a podium.

gmeenaghan@thenational.ae