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A preview on the 24 Hours of Dubai 2009

© InsightF1 - Jeroen Vermeeren

The endurance racing season has come to an end almost everywhere, but in the Middle East things are about to get underway again. In just under two weeks from now around 80 teams will be racing on the Dubai Autodrome for the fourth running of the TOYO TIRES 24H of Dubai.

With VIP Pet Foods, Bleekemolen Race Planet, Delahaye Racing Team, Juniper Racing, ORMS-Racing and SAS Lechner Racing not taking part in the 2009 edition, the top six will be completely different at the end of the next race.

In the 2008 edition it seemed that the Porsche 997 GT3 RSR was the car to beat on the desert track. VIP Pet Foods took pole position ahead of Proton Competition and Konrad Motorsport but the Australian team was the only team to stay out of trouble and won the race, followed by a Porsche Cup car and a Renault Megane Trophy. Like VIP Pet Foods Proton Competition and Konrad Motorsport will skip the 2009 edition of the TOYO TIRES 24H of Dubai.

The battle in the A6 class, which is expected to deliver the winner of the 2009 race, should be much closer this time as the rules for 2009 have changed. In order to get a smaller performance gap between the Porsche GT3 RSRs and Porsche GT3 Cup cars the minimum weight for the Cup cars has been lowered to 1200kg, while the RSR will have to be at least 1300kg. An extra disadvantage for the RSR teams will be a 90 liter fuel tank capacity.

With the complete entry list not yet available a prediction on who will be the race winner could be too early, but there are some strong line-ups on the list already. Autorlando Sport will have one of its 997 GT3 RSRs in Dubai, driven by Francisco Cruz Martins, Gianluca Roda and Richard Lietz. ARC Bratislava’s Miro Konopka will be joined by Mauro Casadei, Jiri Janak and Rüdiger Klos. A fourth 997 GT3 RSR will be entered by Chad Racing.

Other interesting and potentially strong entries are Jetalliance Racing, which will be battling the RSRs with a997 GT3 Cup to be driven by Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer, Alex Muller, Thomas Gruber and Vitus Eckert, a Mosler MT900 GT3 for Gravity Racing International (with Vincent Radermecker as one of the drivers) and the Khaleji Motorsport Ferrari F430 GT to be driven by Rob Wilson, Karim Ojjeh, Adrian Newey, Joe Macari and Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Al Maktoum.

The weather caused treacherous road conditions in the last edition, something that is not expected to happen this year. It hardly ever rains in Dubai and the last time the weather hit the track hard was only recent (during the final weekend of the GT3 season). So let’s hope that it will all be about teams and drivers battling it out on the track rather than getting caught out by the changing weather conditions.

The race will start on Friday January 9, 2009 (at 14:00 local time) and will finish exactly 24 hours later on Saturday January 10.

More news later…