Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah and co-driver Matthieu Baumel in action during Stage 3 of Dakar Rally in this January 4, 2022 file photo.
Fresh from the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) triumph, Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah is looking for fifth overall and second consecutive Dakar Rally title in Saudi Arabia.
Dakar Rally, considered the most gruelling off road challenge, will begin on December 31 with Saudi Arabia hosting the mega racing event for the fourth successive year.
Contestants featuring in five overall categories of vehicle with sub categories will cover 5,000kms during 14 time stages until the race will culminate in Dammam on January 15.
Al Attiyah and French co-driver Mathieu Baumel won the drivers’ title in W2RC in October and the duo also won the previous edition of Dakar Rally with Al Attiyah, hoping to defend his title successfully.
“The Dakar Rally really is the big one! We’ve had a great year, winning the first ever W2RC title. But we’d love to add another Dakar victory to the list, and we are sure that the car is good enough to bring us that win,” Al Attiyah, who also won the Dakar Rally titles in 2011, 2015 and 2019, said.
In the last edition, the Qatari driver overcame a tough challenge from France’s Sebastien Loeb to win his fourth title.
Al Attiyah, who is representing Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR), will team up with Baumel again as the pair eye a repeat show in Saudi Arabia.
“We’ve had a stunning year building up to this race, starting with a win at the Dakar in January this year. This was followed by the W2RC title, as well as the South African Rally-Raid Championship win, so we feel that we are extremely well prepared for the race. All I want now is for the flag to drop, so that we can go racing in order to see how our latest GR DKR Hilux T1+ stacks up against the competition,” TGR Dakar Team Principal Glyn Hall was quoted as saying by team’s website.
The 11km-long prologue for the race will get the action under way during the Saturday afternoon, before the race itself kicks off on New Year’s Day 2023.
Dakar Rally route will start at the Sea Camp, on the North-Western coastline of Saudi Arabia. Both the prologue and Stage 1 will be staged from there, before Stage 2 takes the rally towards the stunning rocks and canyons around Alula. Next up is Stage 3 towards Ha’il, where the bivouac will remain in place for three days before shifting to Al Duwadimi for two days. Stage 8 will see the rally reach the Saudi capital of Riyadh, for a much-needed Rest Day.
From here, the route continues in an Eastward direction towards Haradh, before shifting into the Empty Quarter for the final few days of the event. This year’s Marathon Stage – where the crews race away from the bivouac to an unsupported camp in the desert, before racing back the following day – will take place near the end of the race, and may well change the outcome of the event.
The final stages of the race will take the crews from Shaybah to Al Hofuf, and on to the city of Dammam, on the Arabian Gulf.
While the closing three stages of the rally all feature distances under 200km, the organisers have cautioned that these stages may well prove the toughest of the event, and that competitors should not take them lightly based purely on their relatively short distances. Input from TGR
