The Peninsula
Northern Ireland’s Kris Meeke and his English navigator Sebastien Marshall finished the opening special stage of the 2021 Qatar International Rally with a 6.6-second advantage over local hero Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah at Katara, north of Doha, late yesterday.
Driving a Škoda Fabia R5 on the sealed surface stage, Meeke clocked a time of 4min 14.3sec. The 4.4km stage consisted of two runs and two laps of a purpose-built track. This followed immediately after the event’s pre-event press conference and a ceremonial start where 17 cars taking part in the FIA event and four entered in the Qatar National Rally were flagged away by senior QMMF officials.
“It is going to be a new challenge for me,” said Meeke before the start at Katara. “This type of terrain is completely unique and a lot different to all the rallies I have done in my career. To do a rally in this desert style, for sure, it is going to take me some time to adapt. I am here to learn and try and increase my experience over this type of terrain. Qatar is the only round (MERC) for me at the moment.”
“I have a good chance for this race,” said Al Attiyah. “I have a lot of experience here, of course. We have a good number of competitors, a strong R5 section and Kris Meeke is competing here for the first time and we have Abdulaziz Al Kuwari and Khalid Al Suwaidi. It is a good start for 2021.
Al Kuwari posted the third quickest time of 4min 28.6sec in his Škoda Fabia R5 and Khalid Al-Suwaidi rounded off the top four.
“Honestly I feel like a kid when you put him for the first time on a bicycle,” said Al Kuwari. “When I was going to do testing, I missed rally cars. I just want to keep driving. Big names are competing and the competition with them will be really good. The stages are nice and not really as rough as usual in Qatar. The plan is to buy the car after the rally and keep driving.”
Defending MERC 2 champion Meshari Al Thefiri had planned to switch to a Hyundai for the season opener, but the Covid-19 pandemic put paid to those plans and he recorded a time of 4min 51.2sec to hold the lead in MERC 2.
Taking place in unprecedented times, one of the region’s most famous motor sporting events has been put together under rigid Covid-19 safety guidelines and staff at the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) have laid on a challenging route through the northern deserts.
Competitors passed their scrutineering and technical checks for FIA homologation compliance yesterday morning at the Losail Sports Centre. They were also joined by three drivers entered in lightweight prototype vehicles in a T3 class that is permitted to take part in the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies.
The FIA T3 category is not permitted to enter MERC rounds, however, and these drivers are running in a separate Qatar National Rally category behind the main field in their uprated Can-Am and Polaris derivatives.
The FIA has, however, permitted the use of FIA T4 vehicles this season on the gravel rounds of the MERC in Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Cyprus and Kuwait. They don’t have the performance or tuning enhancements of their T3 stable mates but featured strongly at the recent Dakar Rally.
T3 Can-Am Maverick X3s snatched the top three places in the SSV (T3 and T4 combined) category with Chile’s Francisco Lopez holding off the challenge from America’s Austin Jones and Poland’s Aron Domzala.
Normally associated with battling the elements and the toughest off-road terrain in the world, these durable windshield-less vehicles will be an interesting spectacle on shorter special stages that feature in the MERC.
Meeke was competing in the SSV T3 section at the Dakar for the first time and he is one of the front-runners for outright victory this weekend in a conventional R5 version of the Škoda Fabia. Saudi Arabia’s Saleh Al Saif was a Dakar front-runner for several days in the SSV T4 category and he has travelled to Qatar to compete at the rear of the international field.
The Lebanese crew of Jad Al Aawar and Vicken Kanledjian switched to taking part in the Qatar National Rally after pre-event scrutineering. Qatar-based Al Aawar is a regular competitor in the Lebanese national rally series with a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX and is taking part with a Can-Am this weekend.
Al Aawar is running in a four-car Lebanese team under the Team AMT banner in Qatar alongside MERC 3 front-runner Henry Kahy and MERC 2 competitors Ahmad Khaled and Shadi El Fakih. The operation runs under the management of 2001 Lebanese national rally series winner Doumit bou Doumit.
The Can-Am Maverick X3 is currently the most popular of the T4 vehicles currently on the world stage, but both Polaris and Yamaha are heavily involved in active competition with their RZR 1000 and YXZ 1000R models and several teams are now focusing their resources on race programmes across the world in the FIA T4 category.
Many insiders see the introduction of the FIA T4 section to the MERC as a very positive step forward to attract up and coming young talent on lower budgets in the future.
Al Aawar is joined by Qatar’s Ahmed and Khalid Al-Mohannadi and Doha-based Ahmed Allouh in the four-car Qatar National Rally. Aside from Al Mohannadi and Russian navigator Kirill Shubin, who are competing in a Polaris, the drivers are at the helm of Can-Ams.
This weekend’s Qatar International Rally is being held under the chairmanship of QMMF President Abdulrahman Al Mannai, senior committee member Abdulrazaq Al Kuwari and the QMMF’s Executive Director Amro Al Hamad.
Today, competitors will tackle two loops of a pair of demanding gravel stages to the north of Doha. The first pass through Eraida (20.13km) goes live at 10.25hrs and precedes nearby Al-Thakira (20.34km) at 11.00hrs.After a return to the Losail Sports Centre for regrouping and a 30-minute service, the two timed tests are repeated at 13.10hrs and 13.45hrs.