MOMO made a successful comeback at Daytona this weekend. The MOMO NGT Motorsport team had a great driver line-up with Porsche Super Cup and Porsche GT3 Cup Champions and Vice Champions Henrique Cisneros, Sean Edwards, Carlos Kauffmann and Nick Tandy. The MOMO team also had a very fast Porsche GT3 that really could have finished in the top five of the 50th running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

The team practiced well on Thursday and Friday and Sean Edwards was the qualifying driver. For his second participation in the Rolex 24 At Daytona Edwards was given the honor to qualify the No. 26 MOMO NGT Motorsport Porsche GT3 on Thursday afternoon. Sean qualified the MOMO car in 13th place and he started the race from the 7th row before an estimated 80,000 spectators.

Sean Edwards was able to show his muscles and the competitiveness of his MOMO NGT Motorsport Porsche. He went from 13th to leading the race after only 75 minutes of racing. Each of the drivers were able to run their stint without any major problems.

The MOMO NGT Motorsport team continued their problem free race and the drivers started to build top five finish expectations until 6:30 AM Sunday morning.

Following a routine pit stop and a brake change, a MOMO NGT Motorsport crew member discovered that the car had a damper problem and the car was immediately pushed back to the garage for repair. Sean Edwards was behind the wheel at the time and was 10th before the incident. Unfortunately the problem cost the team several positions and after a 20-minute repair job, the 26 MOMO car restarted in 17th place.

After that problem that put the car too many laps down, the MOMO NGT Motorsport drivers were never in contention to come back in the top ten. Another problem 51 minutes before the end of the race forced the 26 car driven at the time by Nick Tandy to visit the garage because of a battery problem. The problem was fixed by the crew and Carlos Kauffmann was able to return to the track and cross the finish line for the MOMO NGT Motorsport team.

Led by team owner Ramez Wahab, the NGT Motorsport team raced and finished its first Rolex 24 At Daytona. The next major rendez-vous for the MOMO NGT Motorsport team is the MOBIL 1 12 Hours of Sebring next March.

Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon with its drivers Sean Edwards, Khaled Al Qubaisi, Jeroen Bleekemolen, and Thomas Jager, beat strong competition from BMW, Ferrari, Audi, Mercedes and Porsche to win the seventh edition of the 24 hour race in Dubai. With a new distance record of 628 laps (3385 miles) Black Falcon scored the first 24 victory for Mercedes since 1989 at Le Mans and the first for the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, only a year after its debut in the 24 hours of Dubai.

This year’s edition of the 24 hour race in the Arab emirate of Dubai was full of international teams and drivers at their best. From the start of the race, Black Falcon’s SLS was amongst the fastest and fought all the way from 15th up to 1st position in the first hour. Later in the race they lost their advantage, because it was too far away from the pit lane entry at the beginning of a code 60 and therefore could not take full advantage of a pitstop. The competition took advantage of the situation and drove past Black Falcon. Several tactical ploys by the drivers and team were able to regain the lost time and get the lead back eventually.

Sean Edwards was the one to regain the lead before midnight with a great move around the outside of another Mercedes SLS. Over the next few hours Khaled Al Qubaisi, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Sean Edwards and Thomas Jager built their lead up. Even so, after 18 hour of the race, the top three cars (Mercedes, BMW, Mercedes) were covered by only 7 seconds! Good tactics from the team, excellent pit stops from the crew and fast driving, combined with the high reliability of the SLS meant that after 24 hours, the first overall victory for Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon was achieved.

Sean Edwards:
“What an amazing race we had, it was such an amazing fight all the way to the end! I am so happy to win my first 24 hour race and to help Mercedes get the first for the SLS. Everyone performed flawlessly from the team and drivers, which is what you need in modern endurance racing, no mistakes. We spent the least time in the pits and won the race because of it.”

Khaled Al Qubaisi:
“To have won the 24 hours of Dubai is a great feeling. The victory was hard fought, the race was very tight and the competition very high. Therefore, the race for the whole team was incredibly demanding. Nevertheless, everybody in the team did a great job, and my dream team of drivers performed outstandingly. It was such a great feeling to cross the finish line after so much hard work to achieve the result we really deserved!”

NGT Motorsport has announced MOMO as primary sponsor for the team’s No. 26 GT class entry in the 50th Anniversary Rolex 24 at Daytona to be run Jan. 28-29 at Daytona International Speedway. The MOMO brand is closely associated with the great history of the Rolex 24 At Daytona, having achieved an overall win in the event back in 1998.

The No. 26 MOMO Porsche GT3 entry will be driven by Porsche Carrera Cup standouts Nick Tandy and Sean Edwards, 2011 IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge Champion Henrique Cisneros and multiple IMSA GT3 Cup race winner and pole award winner Carlos Kauffmann.
The car bears bears a striking resemblance to that of the MOMO Ferrari teams from past Rolex 24 events, including the 1998 race-winning Ferrari 333SP. Gianpiero Moretti, who had made it a personal goal to win the Rolex 24, finally won the event that year in his 15th attempt in a Kevin Doran-prepped machine. He was joined by drivers Mauro Baldi, Arie Luendyk, and Didier Theys.

NGT Motorsport was founded in 2003 by Ramez Wahab and has competed actively in the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge ever since. The Miami, Fla.-based team won team and driver IMSA GT3 championships in 2010 and 2011 and has participated successfully in various other endurance races. The team will make its Rolex 24 debut in January.

Rolex 24 At Daytona takes place January 26 – 29, 2012
European viewers can catch the race Live on Motors TV.