Herberth Motorsport has claimed the first outright pole position for Porsche at the Hankook 24H DUBAI in six years, securing the event’s fastest ever GT pole lap in the process.  

Sven Müller in the Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (#92, Jürgen Häring / Wolfgang Triller / Vincent Kolb / Sven Müller / Klaus Bachler) posted an extraordinary 1m 56.553s lap around the 5.39km Dubai Autodrome with just two minutes of the 30-minute session left to run to secure the Bavarian team’s maiden pole position at the Hankook 24H DUBAI. In the process, the German also bested the previous fastest pole lap in Dubai, a 1m 56.716s set by Mirko Bortolotti back in 2018.

“It was a great qualifying,” FXPrimus GT polesitter Sven Müller explained post-session. “It was an intense session and we put on two new sets of tyres because the front was really, really tight! But I enjoyed every moment on-track. There was no traffic, the car was really awesome, and you never know what’s going to happen, but for me, it was a perfect lap. I’m really looking forward to the race tomorrow.”

In a frenetic session, the FXPrimus GT pole position was secured by just 0.140s, former event winner Herberth Motorsport pipping the Porsche 911 GT3 R of long-time provisional polesitter DINAMIC MOTORSPORT (#7, Roberto Pampanini / Mauro Calamia / Stefano Monaco / Matteo Cairoli) with barely 120 seconds left to run on the clock. The Italian team will nevertheless start tomorrow’s 24-hour event from the front row.

The Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo of two-time event polesitter GRT Grasser Racing Team (#63, Rolf Ineichen / Adrian Amstutz / Mirko Bortolotti / Rik Breukers) will line up 3rd for tomorrow’s 24H SERIES powered by Hankook season opener, while last year’s COPPA FLORIO 12H Sicily winner – the GPX Racing Porsche 991 GT3 R (#36, Axcil Jefferies / Frederic Fatien / Mathieu Jaminet / Julien Andlauer / Alain Ferté) – will share the second row of the grid for its home event.

The second of three Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (#91, Ralf Bohn / Daniel Allemann / Robert Renauer / Alfred Renauer) rounds out the overall top five, securing GT3-AM class pole position in the process. Impressively, this means four of the top five runners in GT qualifying at the 2021 Hankook 24H DUBAI are Porsche 991 GT3 Rs.

The Haupt Racing Team, which replaces five-time event winner Black Falcon as a Mercedes-AMG’s customer entry in Dubai, will line up 6th (#5, Khaled Al Qubaisi / Valentin Pierburg / Florian Scholze / Nico Bastian / Patrick Assenheimer) and 7th (#4, Hubert Haupt / Maro Engel / Patrick Assenheimer / Ryan Ratcliffe / Khaled Al Qubaisi) overall. The German team this weekend fields two of only three men to ever win the Hankook 24H DUBAI three times, team owner Hubert Haupt and the UAE’s own Khaled Al Qubaisi.

In an impressive debut for the McLaren 720S GT3 in the 24H SERIES, Inception Racing by Optimum (#72, Brendan Iribe / Ollie Millroy / Nick Moss / Joe Osborne) rounds out the GT3-AM top three in qualifying and will start 9th overall on the grid just ahead of the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo of 2016 Hankook 24H DUBAI winner, WRT (#31, Dries Vanthoor / Kelvin van der Linde / Louis Machiels / Benjamin Goethe / Frank Bird).

One notable absentee from the sharp end of qualifying was Car Collection Motorsport. While the German team’s GT3-AM-entered Audi R8 LMS (#34, Johannes Dr. Kirchhof / Gustav Edelhoff / Elmar Grimm / Max Edelhoff) was able to post a solid 6th fastest time in-class (14th overall), the sister #88 entry (Milan Dontje / Kim Holmgaard / Martin Lechmann / Tim Müller / Johannes Stengel) was unable to take part in qualifying at all due to heavy damage sustained to the rear suspension during official Free Practice.

The DUWO Racing Porsche 991-II Cup (#909, Andrey Mukovoz / Stanislav Sidoruk / Sergey Peregudov / Dylan Pereira) has claimed 991-class pole position for the Hankook 24H DUBAI ahead of HRT Performance (#928, Leon Köhler / Erik Behrens / Fabio Citignola / Sebastian Freymuth / JM Littman) and PROFILDOORS by Huber Racing (#924, Larry ten Voorde / Ilya Melnikov / Merabi Mekvabishvili / Gabriele Rindone / Matthias Hoffsümmer). The top two in-class will be split on the grid by the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo of GTX polesitter Gt 3 Poland (#708, Grzegorz Moczulski / Andrzej Lewandowski / Rafal Mikrut / Pawel Kowalski / Bartosz Opiola). Former Overall GT Teams’ champion Leipert Motorsport (#710, Gregg Gorski / Gerhard Watzinger / Kurt Thiel / Oscar Lee / Fidel Leib) was the second fastest of the GTX runners, while Vortex V8 (#701, Philippe Bonnel / Lionel Amrouche / Karen Gaillard / Alban Varutti) prevented an all-Lamborghini top three in-class in qualifying with its eponymous Vortex 1.0.

In the GT4 class, Canada’s ST Racing (#438, Samantha Tan / Chandler Hull / Jon Miller / Nick Wittmer) repeated its class pole position from one year with its BMW M4 GT4. The Dragon Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4 (#488, Denis Remenyako / Adam Christodoulou / John Hartshorne / Ollie Hancock) lines up 2nd in-class for its home event, just ahead of the PROsport Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 (#401, Nico Verdonck / Rodrigue Gillion / Stephane Lemeret / Patrik Matthiesen / Constantin Schöll), the 24H SERIES’ reigning Overall GT Teams’ champion.

The green flag is set to drop for the 16th annual Hankook 24H DUBAI on Friday 15 January at 15.00 hrs local time, and the 24-hour event will run uninterrupted to the chequered flag, set to drop at 15.00 hrs on Saturday 16 January.

Source: Dubai 24 Media Release