DEAD SEA, Jordan: Defending FIA Middle East rally champion Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah leads a quality 25-car entry into the Jordan Rally, round three of the regional series, which gets underway with a glitzy ceremonial start at Abdali, the new downtown of Amman, from 4pm on Thursday evening.
A winner of 52 regional rallies in his illustrious career, the Qatari and his Italian co-driver Giovanni Bernacchini have won three previous Jordan rallies together and Al Attiyah will be chasing win number eight in the Hashemite Kingdom when he lines up at the start to prepare for 21 timed special stages, 20 of which will run over demanding gravel terrain through the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area.
Al Attiyah has two championship wins to his name this season in Qatar and Kuwait and a 17-point lead over Abu Dhabi Racing’s Sheikh Khalid Al-Qassimi in the title race. Al-Qassimi is seeded at two and heads a six-car team from the UAE that includes five Junior drivers chasing points in both the Junior and 2WD categories at the wheel of Citroën DS3 R3s. Mohamed Al-Mutawee leads both classes after two rounds.
Saudi Arabia’s Yazeed Al-Rajhi has endured mixed results this season and lies third in the title race in his Ford Fiesta RRC and the Riyadh driver needs a podium finish to keep his title hopes alive before heading off to Argentina for next weekend’s WRC round.
Sharjah’s Sheikh Abdullah Al-Qassimi, leading Jordanian driver Marouf Abu Samra and Kuwait’s Salah bin Eidan round off the top six ahead of the opening timed 1.6km super special stage in Abdali from 5.35pm on Thursday evening.
“The gravel stages are very nice and look like they have been graded recently because they are quite slippery in a lot of places and we will need to take care of the loose gravel on the surface,” said Italian co-driver Nicola Arena, who is partnering Qatar’s Abdullah Al-Kuwari in the eighth-seeded QAFAC Rally Team Ford Fiesta R5.
Jordan is well represented on this occasion: supporting Abu Samra are Ala’ Khalifeh and Ala’a Rasheed in a pair of Ford Fiestas and Husam Salem in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII entered in the Group N section.
Salem’s main competition comes from the Kuwaiti driver Meshari Al-Thafiri, who arrives in Jordan with a 10-point lead in the Group N Cup. Further entrants in the showroom category include Jordan’s Khaled Juma, Basheer Azar and Salameh Al-Qammaz and Qatar’s Khalifa Al-Attiyah and Nada Zeidan. Lebanese veteran Michel Saleh bolsters the Group N entry in his Subaru Impreza.
The Jordanian husband and wife team of Suhail Al-Jariri and Maysoon Jayousi are taking part in their first event together in a Group N Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI. Suhail has co-driven on a national event before, but this is the first rally ever for his co-driving wife. The couple met for the first time at a speed test in Palestine. Seven of the leading drivers will join a Q&A forum at the podium in Abdali on Thursday evening from 4pm in place of the traditional pre-event press conference. Crews will then cross the start ramp in reverse order before tackling the opening super special in a similar order from 5.35pm.
The Peninsula
