The Peninsula
Qatar’s Adel Abdulla faces a fight back over the final stages of the Italian Baja, round three of the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas, after slipping to eighth in the T3 rankings with windscreen wiper issues after three of the event’s six timed sections yesterday.
The Doha-based driver and French co-driver Jean-Michel Polato clocked a time of 10min 11sec through the opening 12.09km Murlis super special on Friday evening and that left the Can-Am Maverick X3 crew in third in the T3 category for modified cross-country vehicles. The early advantage went to Latvian driver Aleksandr Dorosinskiy with Santiago Navarro of Spain in second place.
Three runs through a challenging and slightly modified gravel stage of 79.43km followed yesterday. The timed section started and finished at Barbeano.
Running with support from the FN Speed Team and Ooredoo, the Qatar telecommunications company, Adel ceded time to his rivals in the opener and reached the finish in ninth and slipped to eighth in the overall rankings. Problems with a faulty windscreen wiper had cost the Qatari 39 minutes in the muddy and sodden stage.
Dorosinskiy set the fastest time of 1hr 09min 54sec to extend his outright T3 lead over Italian driver Amerigo Ventura to 3min 53sec. Navarro held third and Russian Fedor Vorobyev and Italy’s Michele Cinotto rounded off the top five.