Dubai 24 hour race end dramatically after 18 hours of flawless actions

SHAHIN Nouri, aka Fineboy, a Swiss born racer living in Nigeria started for the first time at the 11th edition of the Dubai 24 hour race representing Nigeria. It was the first time ever Nigeria was represented at the endurance race in Dubai. With 3 other drivers; Mikhail Spiridonov Russia, JC Perrin Canada and Frank Leone-Provot France and the Leipert Motorsport Team running the Lamborghini Huracan, they were set for a victory in the A6-AM class.

During the qualifying session, the team and drivers had decided not to go below a lap time of 2:05 to be able to refuel 120 liters per stop instead of 100 liters. Mikhail Spiridonov then set a lap time of 2.0585. To try to go even closer to the 2:05 mark and make up a few places on the starting grid, the team manager, Ingo Leipert, sent the #12 out again. Unfortunately Mikhail set a lap time below 2:05. So there it was and the guys had to be restricted to refueling pit stops of 100 liters which meant more pit stops.

At the start of the race most the drivers drove very well and the Lamborghini was running smoothly and flawlessly. Because of many full course yellow flags with virtual safety cars limiting the speed on track at 60km/h, one of which lasted 1 hour to extricate a wound driver from a collision, the #12 car couldn’t come as fast forward as the team had hoped for. Indeed their fastest driver, Shahin could not gain so much position as he was, unluckily then one limited by most virtual safety cars.

After 17h of exciting racing through heavy traffic, the car was occupying the 21st overall position and the 4th position in the A6-AM class. The race pace of all 4 drivers was constantly improving, beating each other’s fastest lap. The Lamborghini was catching up rapidly the 3rd in class, lapping 5 second faster than them. The podium was on site. All mechanics and crew members were super excited and very much committed with very fast tires and breaks changes.

At 7h19am on Saturday morning the incident happened! The #12 Lamborghini with Spiridonov at the wheel was pushed out of the track into the wall by the #191 BMW with driver Christopher Wishart. The Huracan crashed straight into the wall, spinned and hit with the back of the car into the wall again and caught fire. Luckily, Mikhail came out this terrible crash uninjured with just a bruised right leg.

Nouri told NATIONAL DAILY SPORTS that “The team did a great job in preparing the car, our race pace was pretty good as we were about to fight for the class podium.

Unfortunately another bad driver took us out of the race. With so many cars on track, it was a difficult race, probably the most difficult I have ever driven. It was very exciting and I am sure that without this unfortunate crash we would have finished brilliantly this 24h endurance race.”