DUBAI // With the sun having set and the floodlights now beaming, Khalid Al Qubaisi and his Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcons crew lead the 24 Hours of Dubai following a frenetic nine hours of on-track action.
The reigning champions, who had started from second on the grid courtesy of their impressive Dutchman Jeroen Bleekemolen, snatched the lead from polesitters V8 Racing during the opening few laps. They were unable, however, to immediately build a sizable gap as the Corvette maintained the high level of performance that helped Nicky Pastorelli finish fastest in qualifying the previous day.
The Black Falcons and V8 tossed around the lead like a hot suspension spring for much of the first hour as a battle of attrition played out further down the field.
The UAE capital-based team – chasing a third successive victory at the nine-year-old event – slowly began to build a gap before the end of the first stint and as V8 Racing slipped deeper into the pack, Ram Racing surged.
Jan Magnussen, the former F1 driver, is grouped together with Irishman Matt Griffin, Johnny Mowlem of England and India’s Cheerag Arya and the quartet were proving best of the rest as midnight approached. The Black Falcons’ Swedish driver Andreas Simonsen, who had taken the wheel of their Mercedes after eight hours, held firm however as Griffin pushed, maintaining a three-lap lead with a little less than 15 hours remaining.
The pace of the race proved very fast and after a relatively incident-free first few hours, with nightfall came a number of incidents, leading to six Code 60 caution periods in the first six hours of racing.
gmeenaghan@thenational.ae
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