Qatar’s Nasser Saleh al-Attiyah, who drives for X-Raid team in a Mini All4 Racing, in his team garage at Losail International Circuit yesterday. RIGHT: Qatar’s Mohamed Abu Issa inspects his quad with his team members ahead of the Sealine Cross-Country Rally, which starts today.


By Mikhil Bhat/Losail



With 1,739.55km of punishing off-road competition up ahead in the Sealine Cross-Country Rally, one factor that all the competitors spoke of at the pre-event press conference yesterday was tricky navigation.
Emirati rider Mohamed al-Balooshi even spoke of how extensive usage of GPS and navigation systems could well tune them up for a future Dakar outing.
Nasser Saleh al-Attiyah and Mohamed Abu Issa know a thing or two about competing in Dakar and rallying in Qatar.
Al-Attiyah, who won the 2011 Dakar Rally and finished third in January this year, said, “I am a local driver, I know the area very well but the route is changing everytime. It is very important here to follow the co-driver, because otherwise we will lose a lot of time… the navigation side, you need to work a lot.”
Abu Issa made his Dakar debut this year and finished an impressive fourth in the quads category.
“I have learnt a lot (from the 2014 Dakar outing). It was my first year, so for me it is still a learning curve. I have to try and be consistent. I am still at a stage where I need to find my rhythm. In Abu Dhabi, I had fast days, I had slow days. I haven’t found my pace yet, but hopefully soon,” he said yesterday.
“Qatar is my home race and I am really happy to be here. It is a really important race for me. I obviously hope to win. But I need to get my navigation right and not make too many mistakes. I crashed last year, on the last day. I don’t want to crash again this year. It is a tough rally on the machines, they break down quite often here, the rocks don’t really help. We change a lot of tyres, so anything can happen,” he added.
Abu Issa’s biggest competitor in the event is Polish 48-year-old Rafal Sonik, who finished second in Dakar this year.
“It’s quite hard beating Rafal. He has a lot of experience and he is a good rider. I tend to make much more mistakes than him, I am not as consistent and I am trying to improve on that,” Abu Issa said.
Asked if he felt he had a home advantage, the 24-year-old said, “Rafal has home advantage too. He has been here more than I have. He has driven in more rallies here than I have. So other than support from people around me… He has probably done more kilometres here than me so…”
Al-Attiyah, meanwhile, said that he will soon decide on future participation in the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies. “This is a big event. I missed the first three races, but we decided to come here and I will try to win this race. After that, I will think about my future. There is a possibility we will race in a few more events,” he said.
Talking about his immediate future in the sport, Abu Issa said, “My ambitions are to continue in the cross country rallies and hope to do another year or two on quads and then move to something else. It is a very tough sport, on me, my body, injuries are not easy. I haven’t fully recovered from my injuries from last year yet, and I hope to go through this year without as many injuries as last year.”


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