Car Collection Leads Porsche 1-2 in Dubai Practice

Alex Fontana fronted a Porsche 1-2 for Car Collection Motorsport in the Free Practice session for the Michelin 24H Dubai.

The Swiss racer laid down an early benchmark time at the wheel of the No. 30 Porsche 911 GT3 R, posting a 1:57.220 that remained unbeaten for the rest of the session.

Alexey Nesov was 1.237 seconds further back aboard the No. 92 Pure Rxcing Porsche he shares with Alex Malykhin, Thomas Preining and Harry King.

Gabriele Piana prevented a Porsche top-three sweep by slotting into third aboard the No. 16 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

In the process, he dropped the No. 91 Herberth Motorsport Porsche to fourth, with that car repaired and back on track after a crash in testing on Thursday.

The No. 7 SMP Racing Mercedes-AMG completed the top five in the hands of Vitaly Petrov.

After featuring in the overall top three early on, the No. 991 Paradine Competition BMW M4 GT3 EVO ended the session sixth with Darren Leung at the wheel, leading the GT3 Am ranks in the process.

Herberth Motorsport’s No. 80 Porsche took seventh in the hands of Frank Yu, leading the No. 4 Haupt Racing Team Mercedes-AMG.

The overall top ten was rounded out by the No. 33 Optimum Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo and No. 40 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.

Enrico Fulgenzi went quickest in the 992 class aboard the No. 917 Fulgenzi Racing Porsche 992 GT3 Cup, while Michael Simpson led the GT4 class behind the wheel of the No. 495 CMR Ginetta G56 GT4 EVO.

While no significant incidents occurred, a Code 60 was called when the No. 909 Red Camel-Jordans.nl Porsche stopped on the start-finish straight and needed to be recovered.

Track action for the 24H Dubai continues with the first qualifying sessions for TCR, TCX and GT4 cars at 2:25 p.m. GST (05:45 a.m. ET) with GT3 qualifying at 5:05 p.m. GST (08:05 a.m. ET). Live coverage can be found on the Creventic Motorsport TV YouTube channel.