The familiar names Rovanpera will face on 24-hour race debut

As preparation for the Monte Carlo Rally goes, heading for the Middle East to contest a 24-hour race is on the unconventional side. 

But the news announced shortly before Christmas that Kalle Rovanpera will make his endurance racing debut in next week’s Dubai 24 Hours only underlines that he is indeed feeling “recharged” ahead of his full-time WRC return this year, following a partial campaign in 2024 dovetailed with a race-winning programme in Porsche Carrera Cup Benelux.

Before commencing his bid to reclaim the WRC title he won in 2022 and 2023 from Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville on the traditional 23-26 January Monte Carlo season opener, the 24-year-old Finn will tick another item off his bucket list at the Dubai Autodrome as the twice-around-the-clock enduro is staged for a 20th year. 

The Porsche 911 GT3 R run by Proton Huber Competition Rovanpera will share with four other drivers – Jukka Honkavuori, Jani Kakela, Mark Wallenwein and Joel Monegro – forms part of a deep entry list that comprises reigning champions of the World Endurance Championship in LMGT3, the British Touring Car Championship and British GT, as well as three ex-Formula 1 drivers.

So impressive were the performances of Alexander Malykhin on his way to the inaugural WEC LMGT3 crown last year that he was upgraded from bronze to silver status in the FIA’s driver rankings, effectively precluding a title defence with Klaus Bachler and Joel Sturm. But Malykhin, who steps up to LMP2 in the European Le Mans Series this season with the newly-renamed CLX squad previously called Cool Racing, will return to a Porsche with a crew that must be considered among the favourites.

Entered as usual under the Pure Rxcing banner, he teams up with factory driver and 2023 DTM champion Thomas Preining, 21-year-old Russian Alexey Nesov and 2020 Carrera Cup GB champion Harry King, who partners Malykhin in the Asian Le Mans Series – the pair taking a P2 podium together in December’s Sepang opener.

Bachler will also be vying to score Porsche’s first Dubai win since GPX triumphed in 2021. He joins Italian squad Dinamic GT, with team-mates Anders Fjordbach, Stanislav Minsky, Thomas Kiefer and Carrera Cup North America champion Loek Hartog.

BTCC champion Jake Hill is no stranger to sampling unfamiliar machinery; as a maiden podium on his Fun Cup debut at Oulton Park in October demonstrated. But the West Surrey Racing ace will face another new challenge upon joining Era Motorsport to race its Ferrari 296 GT3 in Dubai. 

Hill will reprise his successful partnership with historics racer Olly Bryant, after the pair thrilled in the RAC TT Celebration at last year’s Goodwood Revival aboard an AC Cobra, and team up with Era regulars Ryan Dalziel, Dwight Merriman and Kyle Tilley.

Another BTCC race winner last season, 2012 World Touring Car champion Rob Huff, will also head east to rejoin Team Parker Racing’s Bentley line-up that finished 10th in 2024. He partners team regular Scott Malvern, as well as father-and-son Shaun and Maxwell Lynn.

Rob Collard has plenty of history with racing BMWs in the BTCC, but has only driven Lamborghini and Mercedes machinery since he began the GT racing chapter of his career in 2020. That will change when the newly-crowned double British GT champion gets a first taste of the new-for-2025 BMW M4 GT3 Evo in Dubai with Century Motorsport, the team that ran his son Ricky at the 2018 British GT opener in 2018.

Collard will link up with car regulars Ahmad Al-Harthy, whose WRT-entered machine won outright in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup round at Monza last year, and Century’s 2023 British GT champion Darren Leung, with the latter’s 2024 GTWCE team-mate Toby Sowery and the winner of 2024’s final British GT round Joshua Caygill completing the roster of a car entered under the Paradine Competition banner.

#2 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-SeriesR: Earl Bamber

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

Cadillac GTP factory driver Earl Bamber, a two-time Le Mans winner, will meanwhile campaign an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 entered by his own Earl Bamber Motorsport squad in the Pro-Am sub-class.

Elsewhere, ex-F1 racers Vitaly Petrov and Sergey Sirotkin are entered in an all-Russian SMP Racing Mercedes line-up that also comprises Kirill Smal, Denis Remenyako and F3 race winner Alexandr Smolyar.

Nikita Mazepin also features on the entry in a GTX class entry prepared by Graff Racing. He’ll race the new LM GT built by UAE-based Rossa Cars with Roman Rusinov, the WEC P2 class champion in 2015, sometime Super Formula racer Harrison Newey and Evgeny Kireev.

Adding to the eclectic nature of the entry list, three-time Formula E race winner Nico Prost will again team up with Ginetta owner Lawrence Tomlinson, his son Freddie and factory driver Mike Simpson aboard a Team CMR Ginetta G56 in the GT4 class after finishing 20th overall together last year with Toro Verde.

Showing the value of the event as a warm-up to the regular European season, particularly following its switch from Hankook tyres to Michelin, several prominent sportscar squads have also lodged entries for the event organised by Dutch organisation Creventic. 

These include Comtoyou, the Belgian Aston Martin outfit that won the Spa 24 Hours last year taking two Vantage GT3s, Le Mans polesitters Optimum Motorsport with a single McLaren 720S and past DTM title-winner HRT – although three-time Dubai 24 winner Hubert Haupt’s team remains with Mercedes ahead of its planned switch to Ford.