The Dubai 24 hours - a hard race

I really quite enjoyed the Dubai 24 hours. The place may not have much charisma, but there is unquestionably an appetite for the race locally, and in early January it is a very pleasant way to warm the bones.

An entry list of 75 cars (74 of which took the start) may not have been as many as in recent years – the average of the last four races has been 92 starters – but this was widely regarded as a good thing. Despite this the total time spent with the race neutralised under code 60 conditions was nearly four hours – only two of the last four races were greater than that.

The quality of the entry lacked for absolutely nothing. There were 23 cars in the A6 class, split 10 in A6-AM and 13 in A6-PRO. The entire A6-PRO field was separated by less than two seconds in qualifying. With an array of Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, Nissan and Mercedes and singleton entries for Ferrari and Chevrolet, predicting a winner was not easy. Qualifying suggested that the Audis had a bit of an advantage in pace, and Matteo Malucelli made it quite clear that he thought that the Ferrari was unable to keep up. There was a point in the middle of the race when the Black Falcon Mercedes’ were actually quicker than the Audis, but whatever gave them that advantage strangely disappeared again after only a few hours – I suspect it might have been down to tyre pressure variations.

It was unusual for Car Collection to enter a full A6-PRO class car, and it seemed strange seeing Rik Breukers in an Audi rather than a Lamborghini, but although he is not classed by Creventic as a PRO, his times compared well with those of Frédéric Vervisch (who did the fastest lap of the race, two-tenths slower than last year’s fastest lap) and Christopher Haase. Dimitri Parhofer, the AM in the car, did his bit, but was well off the pace of his more accomplished co-drivers. All in all it was a well-deserved victory in a race in which many fell by the wayside.

The driving time figures make interesting reading:

Name	Class.	Driving Time	Best Lap
Haase	PRO	6h 34m	1m 59.255s
Vervisch	PRO	5h 19m	1m 58.695s
Breukers	SEMI-PRO	8h 32m	1m 59.461s
Parhofer	AM	2h 03m	2m 04.482s

The rules restrict the total PRO driving time to be under 12h – Haase and Vervisch were at the wheel just seven minutes short of this limit. And Parhofer was just three minutes over his minimum driving time. Such are the margins at stake in the race.

A look back on the race would not be complete with a look at average lap times. In the table below, after the top six overall positions, I have selected just the fastest from each manufacturer which finished outside the top six. In each case, the Average Lap Time is taken over the fastest 20% of green flag laps.

Pos	No.	Car	Average	Best
1	88	Car Collection Audi	2m 00.387s	1m 58.695s
2	7	WRT Audi	2m 00.479s	1m 59.134s
3	11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	2m 01.433s	1m 59.774s
4	63	Grasser Lamborghini	2m 00.550s	1m 59.015s
5	99	Attempto Audi	2m 00.921s	1m 59.805s
6	9	Mücke Audi	2m 00.841s	1m 59.439s
8	91	Herberth Porsche	2m 01.327s	1m 59.439s
15	2	Black Falcon Mercedes	2m 00.995s	1m 59.524s
57	23	KCMG Nissan	2m 01.206s	1m 59.622s
63	18	V8 Corvette	2m 02.296s	2m 00.021s

Before the race (and after qualifying) the organisers updated the BoP table to give the Audis five litres less fuel at each pit stop. The GRT Lamborghini was also given 20kg additional weight. Whilst the table above clearly shows that the Lamborghini (having had pole position) was a little slower than the Audis in the race, it is harder to evaluate the impact of the reduced refuelling amount.

In fact, I think that simply reducing the amount of fuel that may be put into the car at each stop makes very little difference at all, particularly if the amount of the reduction is as little as 5%. Think about it – the Audi R8 LMS has a 120-litre fuel tank, which will be full at the start of the race. The first (and indeed 19 out of the 32 pit stops the car made) were done under code 60 conditions, when only 48 litres are allowed to be put in. But on each of those occasions, the car made its stop before it was empty, so the fact that less fuel was put in was hardly a handicap.

The fact that both the WRT and CC Audis were lapping a tenth of a second faster than the Lamborghini (over 600 laps, that makes one minute over the duration of the race), more than compensates. On top of that, of course, the lower refuelling limit meant that each pit stop was a few seconds quicker for the Audis compared to the Lamborghini and Mercedes.

I am sure someone from Creventic can explain the thinking behind it all, but I am afraid it seems like a paper tiger to me, particularly because there were so many code-60 periods.

In a similar way, looking at the total time spent in the pits can be misleading – clearly being in the pit lane while everyone else is travelling at 60km/h is very different from a fully green pit stop. Unfortunately, I cannot (yet) distinguish between time spent in the pit lane and time spent in the refuelling area. Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine the following table.

Pos	No.	Car	No. of stops	Time in pits
1	88	Car Collection Audi	32	1h 33m 41s
2	7	WRT Audi	39	1h 37m 35s
3	11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	30	1h 24m 32s
4	63	Grasser Lamborghini	36	1h 48m 37s
5	99	Attempto Audi	29	1h 38m 11s
6	9	Mücke Audi	35	1h 53m 18s
7	25	HTP Mercedes	31	1h 29m 54s

Perhaps most noticeable is the large disparity in the number of pit stops taken by different teams. There is a 25% difference in the number of stops made by cars finishing in the top six. Remember that Grasser, WRT and Mücke Motorsport spent extra time in the pit to resolve mechanical issues. And even if the Audis were allowed to put less fuel in at each stop, the untroubled no. 88 car still spent longer in the pit lane than either the Ferrari or the HTP Mercedes. A further indication of the inefficacy of reducing fuel amount as a means to handicap the car’s performance.

The Dubai 24 hours worked though, on so many levels. The winning Car Collection Audi led 560 of the 607 laps, and held the lead unopposed for the final nine hours of the race, yet it was still a gripping encounter. The battle in the GT4 class was even better than I had expected it would be (and I will try to get around to writing something about that soon). The separate TCE element of the race provided plenty of fun and games too, with many cars having problems, even if there were only 20 cars in that division.

For me, it was a ‘proper’ endurance race. Attrition played a huge part, as it should do in races of this kind. And yet, a good number of those who had problems overcame them, and still had their cars running at the finish. Just as it should be.

I have to say a big thank you to my friends at TimeService.nl. Rob, Floortje and the team make a huge effort to ensure that the timekeeping system is one of the best. Anyone using the “Live Timing” website during the race will know what I mean. If examining data is something that interests you, then you probably already know about their results website. If you don’t know about it and you are interested, it’s here.