Overdrive Racing’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah moved to within touching distance of the 2021 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies Drivers’ Cham-pionship with a dominant third career victory at the Abu Dhabi Desert Chal-lenge yesterday.
Partnered by Frenchman Matthieu Baumel, the Qatari won the first four of the five selective sections through the UAE’s Empty Quarter and was able to ease his pace on the final timed test to confirm victory by the margin of 21 minutes 12 secs in his Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux.
His Overdrive Racing team-mate Lucio Alvarez won the final stage and kept his slim title hopes alive with a fine second overall alongside Spanish nav-igator Armand Monleón.
Saudi Arabia’s Yazeed Al Rajhi and Ulster co-driver Michael Orr had hoped to be battling it out for the champi-onship, but a drive shaft breakage cost them dearly and Al Rajhi fought back to finish in fourth place behind Russia’s Denis Krotov.
Cristina Gutierrez and French co-driver François Cazalet, secured the 2021 FIA T3 Drivers’ Championship with second place in the category in a Red Bull-backed Overdrive OT3.
“Nasser is the master of the dunes and he did a fantastic race to win the first four stages,” said Overdrive Rac-ing’s CEO Jean-Marc Fortin. Al Attiyah started confidently on the opening selective section of 265km between Abu Dhabi and Qasr Al Sarab and he beat Poland’s Jakub Przygonski by three minutes to carve out an early lead.
Title rivals and team-mates, Alvarez and Al Rajhi, finished the special in third and fourth, but were 7min 11sec and 7min 57sec behind the Qatari, respectively.
The Qatari continued his impressive early form to win stage two by 3min 07sec and extend his advantage over Przygonski to 6min 07sec.
More importantly, Al Attiyah’s lead over both Alvarez and Al Rajhi grew to 16min 53sec and 25in 40sec. “We are quite happy,” said Al Attiyah. “It was not an easy day because it took more than four hours driving, but it’s good experience and we learned a lot. It was very tough in the dunes near the border. That is good learning for Dakar.”
Another fastest time on the third loop stage of 289.75km enabled Al Attiyah to increase his lead over Prz-ygonski to 11min 18secs and his title chances also received a boost when Al Rajhi was forced to stop and change a broken drive shaft and the time loss of over 42 minutes dropped the Saudi to seventh in the rankings.Al Attiyah made it four stage wins in a row on the last of the loops through the Rub Al Khali. He beat Alvarez by 2min 15sec to take a lead of 23min 48sec into the final run back to Abu Dhabi.
Al Rajhi recovered well from his day three delays to set the fourth quickest time and climbed back to fourth place when Przygonski suffered his own delays.
Al Attiyah’s co-driver Baumel said: “Some nice sandy tracks and dunes. Easy drive through the dunes for Nasser and nice navigation. For the navigator, you don’t have too much trouble here because every five or six kilometres you have a waypoint and you can’t really make a big mistake. I have one victory at this race and Nasser got two, but we didn’t compete here for the last four years and one time we were leading by far (2017) but had a crash on the last day.”There were no risks for Al Attiyah on the final stage and no repeat of the crash that cost him the win in 2017.
The Qatari reached the finish in third place behind Alvarez and Al Rajhi to secure his third win in Abu Dhabi (2008, 2016 and 2021) and Baumel’s second success (2016 and 2021). The season reaches a climax at the Ha’il International Rally in Saudi Arabia at the start of December
