Black Falcon Confirmed as 24H Dubai Winner

Black Falcon has been confirmed as winner of the Hankook 24 Hours of Dubai after the publication of the final results late on Saturday morning. 

The final results are as were predicted earlier in the day, when the race was officially ended at 7:38 a.m. local time after a night of heavy rainfall and flooding at Dubai Autodrome.

A red flag period was called at 10:17 p.m. on Friday evening after 7 hours, 17 minutes of running, and lasted uninterrupted until the race was officially ended in a joint decision between Creventic and Dubai Autodrome.

Severe flooding occurred throughout the circuit, including down the length of pit lane. The largest puddles have now mostly been pumped away and little rain has fallen since sunrise.

Black Falcon’s winning Mercedes-AMG GT3 was driven by Ben Barker, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Khaled Al Qubaisi, Manuel Metzger and Hubert Haupt.

The team is classified as having completed 168 laps and finishing 4 minutes, 42 seconds clear of the second-placed Car Collection Motorsport Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

It was unclear whether Black Falcon would keep its provisional lead because it had pitted to swap Barker for Al Qubaisi just minutes before the red flag was called.

With the possibility of counting the results from the lap before the red flag, as often happens in similar situations, could have given the win to either the Car Collection or MS7 by WRT Audi.

A statement released by the stewards at 10:50 a.m. confirmed that the final order would reflect the race order “at the time of the suspension of the race”, therefore ruling out a one-lap countback.

Black Falcon’s win came from fifth on the grid having lost three positions to a pre-race penalty for a drive-time infringement on Thursday. All drivers are mandated to complete at least two timed laps in Free Practice or Qualifying, but two of its drivers set their first laps in Night Practice, after Qualifying.

Creventic has scrapped minimum drive time requirements for the race owing to the unique circumstances, meaning every driver is eligible to score points, even if they personally did not drive in the race.

Car Collection and MS7 by WRT complete the podium, while Herberth Motorsport’s Porsche 911 GT3 R is fourth ahead of WRT’s other car in fifth.

Barwell Motorsport recovered from a four-minute penalty for a controversial pit lane infraction to finish sixth, ahead of SPS Automotive Performance in the best of the debuting 2020-spec Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos.

MP Motorsport claimed the GT3 Am win from eighth on the track with its drivers Henk de Jong, Daniel de Jong, Bert de Heus and Jaap van Lagen.

Atlas BX Motorsports beat a trio of BMW M4 GT4s to take the GT4 class win with its Mercedes-AMG GT4 for Jongkyum Kim, Steven Cho, Jaesung Park and Masataka Yanagida.

Victory in the TCE division and TCR class went to Belgian team AC Motorsport with its Audi RS 3 LMS TCR shared by Gilles Magnus, Stephane Perrin, Vincent Radermecker, Tom Boonen and Matthew Taskinen.

The race ran under Code 60 conditions for a total of one hour, 36 minutes prior to the red flag, amounting to less than six hours of green flag running.

RESULTS: 24H Dubai