Gulf Racing kicked off its 2015 racing programme with the first race of the International 24hr Series Championship last weekend - the 10th running of the Dubai 24hrs powered by Hankook, earning a hard fought and satisfying 4th place in the A6 Pro-Am class for GT3 cars.
The team fielded a sole Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 with Roald Goethe, Stuart Hall, Fred Fatien and Jamie Campbell-Walter driving once again for the team. After working on car setup and track familiarisation with the car and all drivers in the practice sessions Stuart Hall took the wheel to qualify the car in 5th place in class for the start.
The start of the 24 hours saw the team fighting hard to gain places through the traffic, the drivers pushed on through the day and battled through the evening and into the night. Always in contention and running as high as 3rd place in the early hours the car was well positioned to challenge for the podium as the sun rose on Saturday..
Over the course of the morning the team continued to run competitively and gain advantage over the field behind with faultless driving and pit-stop work despite the difficult traffic and busy pit lane as a result of the huge 91 car grid.
As the race came to a close and the pit-stop strategies began to play out the team found themselves in 4th position and closing in on what looked like a possible podium finish, however this turned out to be just out of reach and the car finally crossed the line in 4th position in the A6 Pro-Am class and 8th overall.
Team Manager Matt Beers said:
"It is great to start the season with such a competitive performance in a 24 hour race, particularly one which now attracts many of the worlds leading GT drivers and teams. This is just the start of 2015 and we have demonstrated again that we can run at the front and fight for those podium spots. Dubai is a challenging race for many reasons and is certainly great preparation for our programme of racing in Europe this year.
I would just like to say congratulations to the team and drivers who all did a fantastic job, the car ran impeccably throughout and was always in safe hands, thanks also go to Reiter Engineering for their support and for such a great race car in the Gallardo GT3."
The full details of Gulf Racing's 2015 championship plans will be announced in the coming weeks.
