DAN Harper is hoping that a first 24-hour race victory in the United Arab Emirates with BMW Motorsport – and its all-new M4 GT3 Evo – over the weekend is going to be the first of many.
Harper’s long wait for victory at an around-the-clock competition on the international stage came to an end in impressive fashion as the number 777 car shared started from the fourth row of the grid and crossed the finish line an entire lap ahead of its nearest challenger.
Success came on the Hillsborough man’s first appearance for Al Manar Racing and was achieved alongside Oman’s Al Faisal Al Zubair, Germany’s Max Hesse, and the British duo of Ben Tuck and Darren Leung.
After almost 590 laps of the Dubai Autodrome, their advantage over Pure Rxcing’s pole qualifying Porsche 911 GT3 R shared by Thomas Preining, Harry King, Alexey Nesov and Alex Malykhin was two minutes and seven seconds, with Dinamic GT’s identical car rounding out the podium spots.
“My debut with the BMW M4 GT3 Evo, debut in a 24-hour race with Team WRT and debut for Al Faisal with BMW M Motorsport,” said 24-year-old Harper, whose full race programme for 2025 is going to be announced this week.
“The whole team had a perfect race and made no mistakes – the strategy was set up perfectly by the team and all the drivers did their job. It was a fantastic race, and I am so glad to get my first 24 hour-race win under my belt. Hopefully there will be many more to come moving forward!”
He added: “A first win from the first race of 2025, I just cannot thank everyone enough, especially Faisal on what was his debut with us and BMW Motorsport. It is just amazing – I cannot believe it.”
On top of faultless displays by all five drivers, and clever pit stop strategies, Harper was full of praise for the M4 GT3 Evo, which ran seamlessly for the duration of the twentieth instalment of the Michelin-backed meeting.
As part of a mid-cycle up-date, it has received multiple tweaks that have helped to improve its overall aerodynamic, cooling and handling performance.
“It was not a bad day for the Evo car, which was flying all race,” he said. “I think we have made all the progress that we wanted with the M4 GT3 in testing – and now we can start to celebrate that.”