Heart of Racing secure class podium after another eventful Dubai 24Hr

Racing in another mixed field of seventy cars (that started the race), the team’s #423 Aston Martin Racing Vantage was amongst another three cars from the British marque to enter the race with another GT4 from the German PROsport Racing team and two AMR Vantage GT3’s from (again) PROsport and another from TF Sport.

Earlier, the two AMR GT4’s had locked out the front row of that class with the #401 PROsport car just edging the Heart of Racing car from Pole Position by just the smallest of margins.

With a Friday afternoon start to the race, all four Aston’s started well with cars either leading their respective class or not too far from the front but with any multi-class race, accidents and incidents were never to be too far away.

Despite their earlier lead in GT4, the #401 PROsport Racing AMR Vantage GT4 sadly developed a progressively deteriorating brake issue that needed their car to spend longer in the pits than it otherwise should during the night. By the time that the issue was finally identified and repaired, the car of Rodrique Gillion, Nico Verdonck, Hugo Sasse, Mike David Ortmann and Guido Dumarey had lost 76 laps to the eventual class winner and would eventually finish P64 overall/P7 in class.

In the GT3 AM Class, the #39 Prosport Racing team was the earlier pace setters between the two stable mate crews in the first quarter of the race before the #95 Duel racing with TF Sport slowly came into its own as the track temperature cooled. That did run them as high as P3 in class as the daylight turned into night.

Disaster was soon to hit the #95 car however with every mechanics worst nightmare forced their distinctly liveried Vantage GT3 into their pit box with an undiagnosed electrical fault.

Nearly four hours in turning around their car effectively ended their race despite some great running from the Moutran brothers with Ahmad Al Harthy up until then. The #95 car would finish P58 overall/P9 in class.

The other AMR Vantage GT3 car of Maxime and Guillaume Dumarey, Jean Glorieux and Simon Balcaen would also be heavily delayed with incident and accident damage of their own to eventually take the chequered flag well and truly battle scared to finish P32 overall/P7 in class.

For the #423 Heart of Racing car however, it was almost a clean run from start to finish with only one lap being determined the difference (subject to official confirmation) between them second in the GT4 class and the class winning Dragon Racing crew that featured many a name formerly associated with Aston Martin machinery.

Congratulations to Gray Newell, Ian James, Alex Riberas and Roman de Angelis for this feat as celebration will be brief as they all need to get back Stateside for the Roar before the 24 next week and the Rolex 24 the weekend after!

Photo credits – 24h Series / Teams