On the 13th and 14th of January, the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai race took place. Fabien shared the Gulf Lamborghini GT3 number 8 with Fred Fatien and had set themselves the daunting challenge of doing the whole race with just two drivers, whereas all the other teams had between 4 and 5 members!

In this way the two drivers would have the opportunity to run as much as possible in real race conditions and with plenty of traffic with a view to preparing their participation in the forthcoming World Endurance Championship. One particularity of the 24h of Dubai is that the faster a car goes in qualifying, the more penalties it receives in terms of weight ballast, fuel tank capacity and ride height for the race however a car that runs too slow is also penalised as it can only do 10 race laps below its qualifying time in the race before receiving a stop go penalty.

The team therefore made a conscious decision not to push too hard and achieve a time that would not penalise them in the race. From the start, Fabien moved up from the sixth row of the grid to the top five. Fabien was driving stints of 2h with only 1h30 rest in between while Fred was in the car.

The two continued running like this until around 4am in the morning when the car developed an oil pressure problem and was forced to retire as a result. Despite this both drivers were happy with the experience, in particular, Fred set some very good and consistent lap times during his stints and the track time will be an excellent preparation for the 2012 World Endurance Championship which starts in March.

Due to the engine problem the team was unable to participate in the 12h of Abu Dhabi race this weekend but hope to be back in action in February to seal victory in the UAE GT national championship.

Source : Team First