As I’m sure we’re all aware by now, the Dubai 24 Hours represents the annual “final” prize for GT Academy. The 2013 race is less than a week away from us and the 2012 winners have been allocated their seats for this year’s race, each looking to better last year’s podium result.
Divided into two RJN Motorsport Nissan 370Zs, each winner is paired with another and two more experienced drivers. Taking car #127 are European winner Wolfgang Reip and Russian winner Mark Shulzhitskiy, who find themselves paired with the Academy’s first winner Lucas Ordoñez in his fourth Dubai 24h and Signatech Nissan driver Roman Rusinov. Roman is both a teammate of the 2010 Academy winner Jordan Tresson at Signatech – driving the #26 car to 4th in class at the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours – and a judge of the 2012 Academy competition for Russia.
The second car, #147, will be driven by US winner Steve “Dan Mitchell” Doherty and German winner Peter Pyzera. Their experienced teammates are RJN Motorsport driver Alex Buncombe, who’s paired each of the European Academy winners in their debut seasons, and perennial Academy judge and Queen of the Ring Sabine Schmitz.
Both cars are in the SP3 class, competing against a mix of GT4-bracket Aston Martins, BMW M3s and Ginetta G50s. Academy fans might also like to keep an eye out for judge Rob Barff, who is again in on the action in the A6 class #88 Dragon Racing Ferrari 458 Italia.
Qualification starts at 12.00 GMT/UTC on January 10th, with the race getting underway at 10.00 GMT/UTC on January 11th. Media coverage will be available at:
- MotorsTV – Live coverage of 10hr of the race, including start and finish, along with later highlights
- 24hrseries.com – Live stream and timing.
- Radiolemans – Live broadcast from Dubai.
See more articles on GT Academy 2012, Mark Shulzhitskiy, Peter Pyzera, Steve Doherty, and Wolfgang Reip.
So the race starts at 6am EST Friday?
5am EST
WOn’t be able to watch the start. But I’ll sure watch some later in the evening :)
Is there any place that i can get the coverage of the qualification session that starts tomorrow?
Hope it’s still daylight in Abu Dhabi at around 19:00GMT.
Iam at school when the race starts :/
Race starts at 10am GMT on Friday 11th (not saturday 12th!) according to MotorsTV uk – program start at 0930
That’s a good catch – the countdown clock on the official site is a day out!
Yeah I had a countdown in the thread and took it down. With this schedule I might possible miss up to 8 hours of the race. :(
Best of luck guys, I wish you all the best!
GO FAST!!
Dang it! I was just in Dubai! If I knew this was going to happen I would’ve stayed…. :'(
Has anyone found out why Steve uses two names?
Why he’s listed for both cars?
Or why they faked a different name to hide his identity while the show was on TV?
Why he is also known as Dan Mitchell.
That was his name they used to hide his true identity while the TV show was on. (to hide the winner) Now that the show is over, he’ll be known by his real name all the time.
So staying up for this.
Also, I updated the thread in the Motorsports section with the links.
Good luck everyone!
Good luck guys :)