Qatar’s al-Attiyah wins 13th Middle East rally title

Qatar’s Nasser Saleh al-Attiyah has won the FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) for the 13th time after winning the Rally Shiraz in Iran.The defending champion won the rally in Iran for the second time, having won it in 2015. Al-Attiyah’s seventh straight MERC title took him within striking distance of the record by Mohamed ben Sulayem — 14 championships.Accompanied by French co-driver Matthew Baumel, al-Attiyah took his Ford Fiesta R5 past the finish line in 1:55:02.0.The Qatari-French duo finished a little over a minute and 30 seconds ahead of Czech pair of Vojtech Stajf and Marketa Skacelova, who made it to second spot in their Skoda Fabia R5.Iranian pair of Hormoz Kalhor and Kamran Hatamkhani was a distant third in a Kia Cerato finishing a further 33 minutes and 33.5 seconds later.The win in Shiraz has taken al-Attiyah’s total number of MERC wins to 66, while Sulayem had 60.After the first day’s action, al-Attiyah had a 1:47.2 lead over Stajf.The Qatari champion only extended the gap, reaching nearly two minutes by the end of the eighth stage before the Czech duo shaved off some time off the leader.Stajf then won the 10th stage and the Czechs were off by 1:41.7.Al-Attiyah-Baumel combine picked up the 11th and penultimate stage and then had no reason to push in a relatively short 12th stage, which Stajf won but still had to settle for the second place on the podium.