At the season opener of the desert marathon, the HANKOOK 24H DUBAI, the Car Collection Motorsport team from Walluf started with two Audi R8 LMS GT3. The Audi R8 LMS GT3 with the number 33 was piloted by Dimitri and Dirg Parhofer, Rémi Terrail, Ali Çapan and Frank Stippler. The sister car, the Kirchhoff-Audi R8 LMS GT3 with the number 34, driven by Dr. Johannes Kirchhoff, Gustav Edelhoff, Elmar Grimm, Ingo Vogler and Wiggo Dalmo.
Two Audi R8 LMS GT3 traveled to the United Arab Emirates for Car Collection Motorsport. Shortly before the qualifying session, there was a driver change on the #33 Audi. Ali Çapan from Turkey, who wants to compete in his second race ever, used the test drives and free practice sessions to get used to the Audi R8 LMS GT3, to get to know the track in Dubai and also to learn how to drive through traffic. He mastered these tasks with flying colors, but they decided to suspend the race in Dubai. Now more tests are on the program for him. He was replaced by Isaac Tutumlu Lopez, who drove in 2016 for Car Collection Motorsport in the ADAC GT Masters and also entered the race at the HANKOOK 24H DUBAI 2017.
In qualifying, Audi Sport customer racing driver Frank Stippler set the fastest time on the Audi R8 LMS GT3 #33. Elmar Grimm was scheduled for the time hunt for the quintet on the sister car with the #34. Stippler qualified for position 11, with an improvement in time prevented by a red flag at the end of the session. Grimm put the GT3 car on grid position 26. In the night practice Tutumlu Lopez then showed once again the potential and finished the session in 2nd place.
The start also took Stippler and Grimm. Both worked their way up in the first hour of the race. The Audi R8 LMS GT3 #33 was already in 6th place, until he was thrown back to position 28 due to a tyre puncture. The Kirchhoff Audi R8 LMS GT3 fought its way into 13th place and 7th position in the A6-AM class. With a perfect strategy, the quintet Parhofer, Parhofer, Terrail, Tutumlu Lopez and Stippler impressively battled back in only two hours to third place in the overall standings and second place in class A6-AM.
In the further cours0e of the race, both vehicles kept consistently in the TOP 10 and TOP 15 respectively. In the eighth hour of racing then the shock. Dimitri Parhofer drove the vehicle #33 as two vehicles touched together and one of them turned in front of him. He was not able to avoid a collision and so he crashed head-on into the vehicle of the competitor. Luckily, both drivers were uninjured, but the team thought it was time to retire from the race. But giving up was not an option for the team around Peter Schmidt and so the mechanics repaired the Audi R8 LMS GT3 in record time and they got back into the race on position 40.
After 24 hard hours Dr. Johannes Kirchhoff, Gustav Edelhoff, Elmar Grimm, Ingo Vogler and Wiggo Dalmo, finished in 11th overall and 5th place in class A6-AM after a perfect race. The sister car with Dimitri and Dirg Parhofer, Rémi Terrail, Isaac Tutumlu Lopez and Frank Stippler finished after a strong catching up at position 23 in the desert marathon. Despite the perfect and faultless performance of the drivers and all team members, they were not satisfied with the result of the race.
Peter Schmidt: „The regulations in the class A6 or A6-AM have changed this season and unfortunately contributed to the discrimination of the gentlemen drivers. The five drivers on our Audi with the number 34 drove a faultless race. Our mechanics and engineers have worked perfectly and faultlessly. Nevertheless, we were not able to retract a podium in the A6-AM class on our own. That’s because in the A6-AM class you only need to have at least two Gentlemen or Bronze drivers on the car. The rest of the crew can be composed of a Gold or Platinum driver and two Silver drivers. If you look at the entry list and let some of the names melt in your mouth, which are started in an „amateur“ class, then that can’t be right. Names like Bernd Schneider, Alfred and Robert Renauer, Dennis Olsen, Lance-David Arnold, Dominik Baumann and many more, should not be able to drive in an “Amateur” class in this sum. Here, Creventic has to change the rules quickly, otherwise it will not make sense for us to continue here.“
