Jimmy JohanssonThe 24H of Dubai
All prepaired for race!
After a long trip down and a short nights sleep we went to the track and unloaded the container and went to the scrutineering to have everything prepaired in time. Everything was OK so we where the first team to get everything ready and the last sticker on the car. Yesterday we had some time to look at the city of dubai, and it must be the largest construktion place on earth!
Right now the clock is allmost 12:00 and we start with free practice at 13:15, continues with Qualification at 15:00 and then we get some night practice to prepair all the light etc. to be all set for the race that starts at 14:00 tomorrow!
Free practice Dubai 24H
We have just finished the free practice.
After a small initial problem with a turbo hose the car seems to be working really good as always and we are trying to figure out this tricky track…
In the total result we were 44th and in our class 9th.
Because we have a turbo on our 2 liter engine we are fitted in the class for cars with up to 3.5 liter engines and the fastest car is a works BMW wich is 2nd overall so it´´s really tough for us but we will do our best!!!
P7/ P45 in Qualifying
We have just finished the qualifying and we are happy with our result because we where 1 second quicker than we had expected on this track!
But as I wrote before our class is really tough so we ended up in P7 in our class and P45 over all.
It will be tough and we have allready seen some crashes and just in the end of the qualification a BMW team blow up their engine so like always; It´s all about doing 24H without a problem and we hope to do this and that it will take us up in the result!
Night practice is finnished!
We have just had a nice dinner after the night practice where we made some laps without problems!
Now the mechanics are preparing the last pieces on the car and then we go back to the hotel to get a nice nights sleep before its time!
We have a short shakedown tommorw morning at 10:30 and then we start the race at 14:00.
Everything is prepaired!
We have just driven 2 laps to check te car and now we have refuelled and the guys are checking everything one last time!
The clock is soom 11:00 and its a bit over 30 degrees and sunny… It´s gonna be really tough today but we are prepaired!
The race has started.
14.00 the race started with Jimmy in the car.
We started from the 45th place and is now at 35th place totally and at 4th place in our class.
Next stint will be driven by Sandra Oscarsson and after that Per Oscarsson.
2 hours and first pitstop done
We are still going strong but not as strong as we expected.
Our calculation said that we should manage to do just up to 2 hours of driving on the fuel, but today the weather is much warmer and we can now see that this affects us really much. We could only go 1 hour and 40 minutes before we had the warning light on the dash for fuel…
We hope that now when the sun sets and the track and the air cools down we can sold it a bit longer but it seem like we have to change our strategy a little bit… Also the tires were quite bad at the end but otherwise we are going strong!
After 2 hours we are 39th totalt and 6th in Class.
Now Sandra is in the car and after her Per will drive before it´s time for me to get out in the dark…
3h 30 min
We have just past 3 hours and 30 minutes and have done the second pitstop. We got a long safety situatuion (Code 60) because a car hit the wall really hard and they have to rpair the wall due to safety..
We are right now 36th in total and 5th in Class
next stop should be around 19:15 local time and then I´m geting in to the car again…
4th in class A5
18:30 (4h 30 min. into race)
#8, Dueller Motorsport with a BMW M3 GTR Just entered the pits with probably rear differential problems…
We are therefor now 4th in class and are just 1 lap from 2nd…
Next stop in around 40 minutes.
Right now in class A5
1. Al Faisal Racing (Schubert motors) (BMW Z4 M Coupé) (Also leader in total)
2. G&A Racing (BMW Z4
3. Empire Motorsport (Lotus)
4. TeamA Sweden (VW Golf R-Line)
23:23
The time is 23:23 and we are stil in the pitbox. It was a hard hit and som big damage to the car…
We have now been in the pits for 2 hours and the chance for the podium that we aimed for is probably gone…
But as they say, It´s not over until it´s over…
We will soon be back on the track and drive the car like if we stole it… 
We have more that 14 hours to go and we want to cross the line after 24 hours!
Back on Track!
00:17
After some hard work from our mechanics we where able to go out on the track again at 23:46.
The car is now running fine and we hope that this was it for this race… we want to kepp it together the last 14 hours!
The is a lot happening now during the early night… a lot of people are having problems in the dark and are going of the track and like always there is some technical problems… The last thing was that the overall leader, Land-motorsport with a Porsche 997 RSR got an engine problem and the engine was burning so they are out of the fight…
Calm night…
I have just got out of the car after a stint that was just at the limit of what we are allowed to drive… The limit is 2 hours and I drove 1.58.
It was a good stint with good pace in 30 minutes and then a “code 60″ that lasted in 30 minutes due to a crash and then it was full throttle for almost one hour. In the end I managed to do a couple of really fast laps and where under our qualifying time which proves that the guys made a perfect job reparing the car earlier!!!
Now it´s time for some sleep before I get in again in about 4 hours…
Right now we are on p53 in totalt.
In pit again….
04:52
After 35 min of his stint Anders was hit by a porsche and we were in pit again…
But our mechanics were able to get us out on the track with Pertan after a well done job with the suspension….
Turbo problems
05:50
After just a few laps Pertan came in to the pit again..
The car didn´t feel alright and our mechanics found out that the turbo had collapsed..
So here we are just on our way to replace the old turbo with a new..
4 hours remaning…
We are on the track on there has been no big issues in since the turbo failure erlier this morning. Just a rear bumber that was a bit loose…
Sandra is now in the car and doing really good latimes, I was out before here and had a good run.
Right now everything is working perfect and we hope it stays like this the last four hours…
I have had about 30 minutes of sleep since 7:30 yesterday morning (over 26 hours) and I´ve been driving aorund 8 of the 15 hours the car has been out so I´m a bit tired but I´ll try to stay awake to keep you updated if we have some news…
Right now we are on p52 total and p 11 in class
In the Box again
At the end of Sandras stint there was a slow white golf in the way…
But, our mechanics won´t give up and are worker hard right now to get the car together in one piece…
It´s getting closer!
12:45
Once again, our hard working mechanics managed to get the car out again. We have been on the track for over 1 hour and in 15 minutes we are doing the last pitstop.
I will get in the car for the last time and try to get it back home to the finnisline!
We made it!
After 24 fun and tough hours we finally made it!!
We ended at 51th place total and 11th place in class.
Now we are going back to the hotel to get a shower and then go out and eat a well deserved dinner..
I´ll be back in sweden at monday and will update more as soon as possible..
Yours Jimmy