DUBAI: Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah, the Middle East champion, is firmly in the driving seat as he tries to win the final round of the Dubai International Rally for a seventh consecutive year.
Home driver Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi is battling the odds to give the UAE its first victory in the event for seven years. At the end of yesterday’s first leg, the Emirati driver was 29.7 seconds adrift of Al Attiyah.
Al Qassimi’s second successive Dubai International win in 2006 was the last by a UAE driver, and he must find a way past Al Attiyah and co-driver Giovanni Bernacchini in their Ford Fiesta RRC to break the Qatari’s dominance of the event.
On completion of the first leg’s six special stages, Saudi Arabia’s Yazeed Al Rajhi was in third place, with the UAE’s Sheikh Abdullah Al Qassimi, Qatar’s Misfer Al Marri and Jordan’s Alaa Rasheed, all driving Ford Fiesta RRC’s, completing the top six.
The 35th Dubai International Rally is endorsed by the office of H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and held under the patronage of H H Sheikh Majid bin Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.
The traditional last round of the Middle East series had been expected to produce a fascinating tussle between Al Attiyah and Sheikh Khalid, and this was confirmed on the day’s first stage which the Qatari edged by just 0.1 seconds from the UAE driver.
Over the next stage, however, Al Qassimi grabbed the initiative, powering his Abu Dhabi Citroën into a 4.9 seconds advantage, before an incident on the next stage saw his lead reduced to 2.1 seconds.
As the Citroën mechanics repaired damage to his car’s front right side, Al Qassmi said: “On the last stage I was pushing a bit more and slid into a bush, then hit some rocks and came back onto the road. I lost about five seconds. It’s good to have the lead, but things are very tight.”
The first stage of the afternoon saw Al Attiyah reclaim the lead by 7.8 seconds, increasing his advantage to 22.6 seconds on stage five after Al Qassimi collected a ten seconds penalty for a jump start, before the Qatari extended his advantage on the last stage. THE PENINSULA
