Just one month after winning the FIA World Endurance Championship in Bahrain, Dunlop is heading back to the Middle East for one of the biggest one-make races of 2014, the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai. The ninth running of the race promises to be more competitive than ever with a prestigious entry list of cars and drivers for the race at the Dubai Autodrome. The event is open to touring cars, GT cars and 24 Hour special cars with the race starting on January 10th.
The 2013 race was won by the Black Falcon AMG Mercedes SLS of Khaled Al Qubaisi, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Bernd Schneider and the much-missed Sean Edwards just two laps ahead of the SRL AF Corse Ferrari 458. Black Falcon will be aiming for a hat-trick, having also won in 2012.
In addition to the defending Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon squad, which includes Jeroen Bleekemolen and Bernd Schneider, top drivers from around the world include top international racers Gianmaria Bruni, Stefan Mücke, Darren Turner, Emmanuel Collard, Johnny Mowlem and Rob Huff.
Dunlop is providing a tyre service for the entire grid and 7000 tyres have been shipped to the Dubai Autodrome circuit in the United Arab Emirates. 38 Dunlop engineers and support staff will travel to the event to provide assistance to the teams with fitting and engineering advice. The Dunlop engineers are able to converse in ten languages in order to get the best for the multi-lingual teams from around the world.
2013 in numbers:
• 600 laps completed
• 3234 km travelled by the winning team
• 30 degrees – expected night-time track temperatures
• 5.390km length track
• 1:59.472 – the 2013 fastest lap of the set by Stefan Mücke in an Aston Martin
• 82 cars
• 18 nations fielding teams
• 34 different nationality drivers
• 28 different car makes and models
• 9 classes
Gary Wassell, Dunlop: Manager – Car Motorsport EU
“This is our biggest event in terms of numbers of cars and a great way to start the new year. Winning in open competition ‘tyre war’ events such as Dunlop did this year in Nurburgring 24h and FIA World Endurance helps us develop tyres for one brand events such as Dubai where we also try to give a balance of performance across the whole grid. History suggests we’ve got it right as no one make of car has dominated. Technically it’s quite difficult to provide tyres that give no advantage to a particular brand but we think we have shown that we’ve done a good job by the close finishes. In the last two years the top four have been no more than six laps apart but we’ve not skimped on performance either with last year’s fastest lap getting just under the two-minute mark. The quality of entries and racing is getting better each year with some great names on the entry list so we anticipate some great racing again in January.”