Baron Motorsport, outright winner of the Hankook 6H ABU DHABI in 2022, will make its surprise return to the event this weekend.

The Austrian team is set to start only its second 24H SERIES powered by Hankook event this weekend in Abu Dhabi having successfully registered a late entry for the Hankook 6H ABU DHABI. As it did in 2022, Baron Motorsport will field a Ferrari 488 GT3, the sole example of the model across the 44-car field. 

Baron Motorsport has also confirmed that team owner Philipp Baron will race alongside Ernst Kirchmayr and Axcil Jefferies, three of the five drivers that took the #86 Ferrari to an impressive victory at the event in 2022: having qualified on outright pole position, Baron, Kirchmayr, Jefferies, and Roman Ziemian and Mikkel Mac led 120 of the completed 166 laps en-route to victory. The latter remains the event’s distance record.

Abu Dhabi marks the series returns for both Philipp Baron and Ernst Kirchmayr: the team namesake makes only his third start in the 24H SERIES in Abu Dhabi, while Kirchmayr, who made his first start with CREVENTIC in Dubai in 2015, has taken victory on both of his most recent 24H SERIES outings in Abu Dhabi (overall, 2022) and Dubai (2023, GTX). 

Jefferies meanwhile made, who his series debut at Paul Ricard in 2017, has started every Hankook 24H DUBAI, bar one, since 2018. Notably, the Zimbabwe driver and UAE motor racing staple also took two consecutive wins at the Hankook 24H DUBAI in 2021 and 2022, impressively, for two different teams (GPX Racing and MS7 by WRT) representing two different brands (Renault and Audi). Jefferies’ Abu Dhabi win in 2022 meant he also secured two outright 24H SERIES wins in consecutive weeks, becoming only the third driver to do so since Guglielmo Belotti and Ivan Bellarosa won back-to-back rounds of the exploratory 24H SERIES Middle East Series in 2019.

Tellingly, and like Car Collection Motorsport, the winner of the inaugural event in 2021, Baron Motorsport could potentially become the first team to take a second victory at the Hankook 6H ABU DHABI in 2024.