Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah is partnering with Spanish co-driver Candido Carrera with one eye on the Drivers’ Championship.
Dead Sea, Jordan: The Jordan Rally roared into life at the HoverUp park by the Dead Sea yesterday evening, with Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah bidding for an 18th victory in the Hashemite Kingdom.
Seventeen crews competing in the third round of the FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) were joined at the start ceremony by another 10 teams solely tackling the second and third rounds of the Jordan national series. They all will tackle a dozen gravel special stages today and tomorrow in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas.
The new Hover-Up Park, nestled in the sandy valley to the north of the Dead Sea, provided the perfect back drop to the start of the Jordan Rally. Al-Attiyah is partnering with Spanish co-driver Candido Carrera with one eye on the Drivers’ Championship, and currently trails his cousin Nasser Khalifa Al-Atya by 12 points.
Al-Attiyah said: “It’s nice to be here again. It’s a difficult race and one of the most beautiful. After winning Oman, we went back to Qatar and were leading until we had a problem with a wheel rim. It was a mistake by the manufacturer. We lost a lot of points but we are here and well prepared. I have won here 17 times. I enjoy my life and I enjoy this event a lot. The stages are nice and the new Rawda stage will be new for everyone. It’s also easy to get a puncture there.
“We need to be clever to get full points because we don’t know what will happen with Lebanon and Cyprus and then the last race will be in Saudi Arabia. This is part of the WRC and more points will be available at that race. Winning here will make it easier for us at the end of the year.”
Oman’s Abdullah Al-Rawahi was the fastest on the shakedown stage.
Oman’s Abdullah Al-Rawahi has consistently matched the Qatari on stages in recent seasons and he too needs as many points as possible after a difficult start to the year. Al-Rawahi is currently 19 points off the championship lead.
The Omani said: “It’s always a good feeling to be back to the place where I actually started rallying in the Middle East championship. These are some of the toughest stages in the region, very technical and the competition is high. We have been close to him (Al-Attiyah) for the last two years. We have taken another step forward and have been working really hard with the team to get the best set-up."
Al-Rawahi was the first driver to post a time in yesterday’s morning’s 4.83km Shakedown stage. He stopped the clocks in 3min 05.0sec, 12.4 seconds quicker than Hamza Bakhashab on his first of a maximum of two runs. Both drivers were markedly quicker on their second passes with Al-Rawahi topping the times by 5.2 seconds with a run of 2min 58.8sec.
Al-Attiyah and Al-Atya both sat out the shakedown opportunity but Sheikh Bader Al-Fayez and Bassel Abu Hamdan took advantage to finalise the set-up on their Škoda Fabia RSs.
The two QMMF-entered Peugeot 208 Rally4s were closely matched with Rashid Al-Muhannadi getting the better of young Mohammed Al-Marri by just 1.3 seconds, although Al-Marri did improve more on his second pass to set the fifth quickest time. Al-Muhannadi teamed up with French co-driver Florian Barral as a late replacement for Szymon Gospodarczyk.
Only 11 of the 17 FIA crews took advantage of the shakedown opportunity.
Leading Jordanian hope Shaker Jweihan knows that his only realistic hope of a podium is if several of his Rally2 rivals hit problems over the course of the next two days. He is dominating the FIA MERC2 category and is relishing the challenge of achieving a hattrick of category wins.
Competitors will tackle two passes through three stages today. The first run through Shuna (15.25km) gets proceedings underway at 09.49hrs and this is followed by rapid-fire sprints through Baptism (11.24km) from 10.39hrs and Ma’in (16.87km), starting at 11.30hrs.
After a return to the Dead Sea for a midday service and regroup, the three stages are repeated in the afternoon from 13.49hrs, 14.39hrs and 15.30hrs.
