Qatar's Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah and his navigator Mathieu Baumel celebrate their victory.
Dead Sea: Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel cruised through the final six gravel stages to secure a comfortable 15th victory at the 2022 Jordan Rally, yesterday.
Driving an Autotek Volkswagen Polo GTi R5 to victory for the third time in Jordan, the Qatari won 11 of the 12 special stages in the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley areas of the Hashemite Kingdom and is now very close to a record-breaking 18th FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) title.
The win marked Al Attiyah’s 81st career MERC success and his third of the season, while his Andorra-based co-driver now has 29 victories to his name.
Al Attiyah, who had a winning margin of 9min 57.6sec, said: “I am really happy to win the Jordan Rally. I have a lot of experience and I have competed a lot here. Thanks to the organisation for making an amazing job. To win 15 times here has not been easy but the team has worked very hard. We need only two or three points from Lebanon and Cyprus. We know we can be strong in every race. We need another Nasser Al Attiyah in the championship. We need people to continue the Middle East Championship. It is important to us.”
The Lebanese duo of Alex Feghali and Joseph Matar overcame a minor turbo scare to seal second overall and first in the MERC2 category, the youngster going one better than his third place and second in class in 2021.
Defending MERC2 champion Meshari Al Thefiri was unable to catch Feghali on the final day but the Kuwaiti and Qatari co-driver Nasser Al Kuwari collected valuable showroom category points nonetheless, their challenge for the showroom category title boosted by the unfortunate retirement of the series-leading Jordanian Issa Abu Jamous with car damage. The Jordanian pairing of Khaled Juma and Tareq Al Taher came home in fourth overall in their Subaru Impreza WRX and claimed victory in the Jordan National Rally after a fierce tussle with fifth-placed Hamada Odeh and Yazan Juma. The crew were separated by just half a second in the battle for fourth and the national category win.
Shadi Shaban and Samer Issa had been given a notional time for the fifth stage on Friday and were able to continue on day two. The Mitsubishi crew reached the finish in sixth overall.
Abdullah Al Rawahi and Jordanian navigator Ata Al Hmoud had held second overall for the first four stages on Friday and continued to show excellent pace on the final day after restarting in their Škoda Fabia R2 under the Rally2 ruling. The Omani set the fastest time in stage nine and a string of second fastest times enabled him to climb back to seventh overall.
That vital finish for the Omani ensured that Al Attiyah was mathematically not able to confirm a record-breaking 18th regional title before the next round in Lebanon.
