If the Gulf 12Hr race is only as half as eventful as its Qualifying......!
Friday, December 14, 2018
With the three Qualifying sessions earlier today ahead of the start of the latest running of the Gulf 12Hours event from the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, we appear still not to have any final qualifying positions ahead of the start of tomorrows race from the organisers.
We understand that the final Qualifying session was red flagged due to a (non serious) accident on track involving a Ferrari with just seconds remaining meaning that the session was not restarted. Since then (earlier this afternoon U?K time) penalties and resulting appeals have meant that the series organisers have been busy and have yet to publish their final grid order.
Taking inspiration from both Aston Martin Racing and those at Dailysportscar.com, we understand that the AMR prepared V8 Vantage GT4 of Mark Farmer, Tom Canning, Adrain Willmott and Ollie Wilkinson have indeed claimed pole in that class - a remarkable achievement!
In GT3 Pro-Am - the Beechdean AMR V8 Vantage GT3 of Andrew Howard, Ross Gunn, Chris Dyson and Humaid Al Masood did hold provisional pole in their class for much of the session before finally qualifying P3 in class.
In the GT3 Pro class the #97 Oman Racing by TF Sport car of Ahmad Al Harthy, Jonny Adam and Darren Turner just pipped the #96 R-Motorsport car of Jake Dennis, Marvin Kirchhofer and Ricky Collard to claim P3 and P4 respectively.
What has got to be remembered here about all three V8 Vantage GT3 cars is that this event is the first time that all three customer cars had turned a wheel except for a brief systems check on a local airstrip near to the Prodrive factory before the cars were flown out for the event. The GT4 car was also busy conducting further development and customer testing virtually up to the last minute as well.
The first six hour session of tomorrows race begins at 09:30hrs local (GMT + 4Hrs) before breaking at 15:30 before returning to the track under floodlight at 17:30Hrs for the second six hours.
Dont forget - live streaming of tomorrows race can be viewed HERE
Photo credits - R- Motorsport / Beechdean AMR / TF Sport / AMR
