24H Dubai: Applause for the Swiss touring car teams 🎥
While there were no Swiss on the podium in the GT classes at the Dubai 2022 24 Hours, some were jubilant in the touring cars. Above all, Steve and Patrick Zacchia on a Ligier.
Steve Zacchia and his dad Patrick from Yverdon-les-Bains took turns at the wheel of a Ligier JS2 R with three equally fast and reliable Frenchmen. The quintet was already ahead in qualifying and dominated the action in the ten-car TCX class almost at will. The Swiss importer of the Ligier sports cars, which are ideally suited for customer racing, is Horag Hotz Racing from Sulgen.
In the TCE division of all touring cars, only the top two TCR teams turned a few more laps in the 24 hours at the Dubai Autodrome. Here, the first half of the race smelled of another Swiss success like in previous years.
TCR victory to Thai
Differential damage and a broken damper on the Audi RS3 LMS (gallery left) cost the night's leading team AC Motorsport from Belgium, with which the Swiss Yannick Mettler and Miklas Born were competing for the first time, valuable time.
As a result, an also strongly piloted Cupra TCR from Thailand took the class lead all the way to the finish. Mettler and Born with their two Belgian partners were still able to bring second place safely to the finish.
Turbulence at Autorama Motorsport
On the way to a possible victory was also the Audi entered for the first time by Autorama Motorsport by Wolf-Power, which professional Rob Huff had driven to pole position. After the defective gearbox had been replaced, the race was over for car number #116.
The two VW Golfs (center gallery), on the other hand, were not very lucky from the first hour. The #112 was literally torpedoed by a Porsche during the night and had to be brought back to the pits. The change of the rear axle took about 20 minutes.
The champion car with start number #111 was doing well until a spin with impact by Constantin Kletzer required about half an hour of repairs. With one hour to go, the two Autorama teams were only 20 seconds apart after a nice and trouble-free catch-up.
Britain's Alex Morgan brought home the podium as the fast final runner for himself and his four team partners, which included Gustavo Xavier as the only Swiss. Jasmin Preisig, Fabian Danz and their two colleagues had to settle for a thankless fourth place.
Double victory for Belgian Audi customer team
Overall victory went to the Saudi flagged Team MS7 by WRT from Belgium with drivers Mohammed Saud Fahad Al Saud, Axcil Jefferies, Christopher Mies (ADAC GT Champion 2021 with Ricardo Feller), Dries Vanthoor and Thomas Neubauer (gallery right). They won ahead of their WRT teammates Benjamin Goethe, Arnold Robin, Maxime Robin, Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer and Frédéric Vervisch. The winning team was in front for almost 90 percent of the distance.
Of the Swiss drivers competing in the GT classes, only Raffaele Marciello was able to celebrate a top result. The Ticino driver was less than eight seconds off third place overall.
Swiss GT pilots failed
Among the retirement victims were the teams of Dinamic Motorsport (Porsche) with three Swiss drivers and the Lamborghini with Rolf Ineichen and Adrian Amstutz, who were initially also in the leading group.
Both Porsche teams from Fach Auto Tech that started in the Cup classes 992-Pro and 992-Am also retired early. The reasons can be found on the homepage of the Schwyz team under this Link to read.
The multiple race winner of the 24H Series Daniel Allemann did not even come to the race after a serious training accident of his Porsche.
The same happened to the specialist Porsche in its collision with a KTM GT2 as it did to other GT teams with Swiss crews.
