Eastalent Racing Audi Wins 24H Dubai

Eastalent Racing Team delivered Audi’s fourth victory in the Hankook 24H Dubai by beating Proton Huber Competition in the 19th running of the Middle Eastern enduro.

The No. 54 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Christopher Haase, Simon Reicher, Markus Winkelhock, Mike Zhou and Gilles Magnus carried through a commanding run to win with 603 laps completed.

The team crossed the line with a lead of one minute and 36.207 seconds over the No. 86 Porsche 911 GT3 R piloted by Sven Mueller, Rinat Salikhov, Sergei Borisov and Victor Shaytar.

The pair of cars ran in identical positions at the halfway point overnight and remained in the same order, even through a late rain shower that caught out several cars in lower classes.

The win marks Audi’s fourth in the near two-decade history of the event, moving it alongside BMW as the manufacturers with the third most 24H Dubai victories.

The most recent win for the Ingolstadt marque came in 2022, when Team WRT triumphed with a one-two result.

Century Motorsport completed the overall podium with its No. 22 BMW M4 GT3 driven by Carl Cavers, Lewis Plato, Jack Barlow and Jake Rattenbury, who picked up the Pro-Am class victory in the process.

The British crew ran fourth behind GetSpeed Performance when the race reached the halfway mark, but moved up when the No. 9 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo retired from the contest in the overnight hours.

The German-entered car, which had Anthony Bartone, Dominik Baumann, Al Faisal Al Zubair, Martin Konrad and Fabian Schiller at the wheel, was an early leader but capitulated as a result of a gearbox failure.

Manamauri by Ebimotors finished fourth overall, with the second Century Motorsport BMW of Michael Johnston, Chris Salkeld, Darren Leung and Sean Gelael completing the overall top five.

Car Collection Motorsport, winners of last week’s Hankook 6H Abu Dhabi, finished sixth ahead of Saintelor Junior Team, HAAS RT and Huber Motorsport.

The overall top ten was rounded out by the No. 10 Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3 of Shaun Lynn, Max Lynn, Joe Wheeler and Rob Huff.

Vasily Vladykin, Andrey Solukovtsev, David Pogosyan and Mikhail Loboda took the GT4 class victory in their No. 496 Continental Racing by TTR Toyota GR Supra GT4 Evo, by virtue of being the only GT4 runner still running by the end of the race.

RESULTS: Hankook 24H Dubai