After the interesting test in Jordan’s shake down Area with Roger Feghali and TapioLaukkanen, we met with Lebanon’s promising and rising rally Star Nicolas Amiouni, to talk about 2010, his future projects, sponsoring, motor tune and much more.
2010
Nicolas only 22 years old has made a very “FAST” impression last year especially in the ROL, and many experts are predicting a very bright future for the young lad. Nicolas started last year with Local rallies in Jordan. The first rally was for Nicolas to start learning on gravel, since he had no previous experience and then decided to continue with the all the local rallies in Jordan. Amiouni’s Display in rally of Lebanon was excellent, but on the 2nd day of the rally he had to retire to end a very good run and a possible podium finish. At the end of last year Amiouni participated in the rally of Cyprus.
“The rally was an amazing experience. You have to build a strategy in Cyprus especially with the setup, since there is a mixture of both Tarmac and Gravel in the same stage and this becomes very challenging for the driver.” Explains Amiouni enthusiastically. And upon asking him about his preferred rally surface, Nicolas answered openly: “when we participated in the first rally in Jordan, we had absolutely no experience on gravel, but we started picking up and learning well, so when we reached the last Local rally in Jordan we were able to push much more and enjoy the driving.”
Nicolas says that his performance on Tarmac and asphalt last year was much better than gravel, but every surface has its characteristics and skills, and gravel for him seems to be fun and challenging, and he believes he should be driving on both surfaces every season.
2011
2010 has been clearly a learning year for Amiouni. He had a busy program in 2010 and he is heading to a busier one in 2011. “We are participating in 4 Local rallies in Jordan including the WRC event between 14 and 16 April. We will be also competing in 3 Lebanese local rallies and the rally of Cyprus, with a possibility of participating in the rally of Syria but nothing is confirmed yet.”
Nicolas will also take part in 3 European events which are yet to be assigned. “We will be participating on R2 cars. Our objective will be to learn how to drive on a car with a sequential Gearbox and front wheel drive, to be able at the end of the year to participate in the Pirelli shootout where we will be driving R2 cars.”
Amiouni’s clear target is to be able to score some impressive result in order to secure a drive for Pirelli next year or somewhere else. The main focus is to be consistent and fast in 2011 in order to find the right sponsor thus having a wider participation in 2012.
The test in Jordan
“This test was a preparation for the WRC event in Jordan. We hooked up with Tapio who has a rally driving school. Our plan was to get as much experience as possible from him with the presence of Roger ahead of the Jordan rally. We started working on the pace notes with Tapio and then started exchanging drivers between me him and roger in order to improve the performance and the level of driving.” said Nicolas.
“TapioLaukkanen (born 23 September 1969 in Lahti) is a Finnish rally driver.
In 1996 he won the Finnish Rally Championship in a Volkswagen Golf GTi and in 1999 he won the British Rally Championship with a Renault Mégane Maxi twinned with fellow Finn, KajLindström.
Other co-drivers include JormaKaikkonen, RistoMannisenmäki, TapioJärvi, IlkkaRiipinen and Rory Kennedy.” – Wikipedia
Competitors in Lebanon and Jordan
Upon asking him about competition in Lebanon, Nicolas believes that Roger Feghali is still the bench mark in Lebanon. “I would be very glad to fight Nick Georgiou for stage wins this year. Nick has a lot of experience especially in WRC events and it will be great to fight with him. Tamer Ghandour is very fast, as well as Gilbert Bannout and many other drivers, so we are looking forward to a very hot season in 2011.”
“In WRC Jordan there are 2 rallies in 1. There is the WRC event and there is the MERC event. We are targeting the latter and we are hoping to challenge rally drivers from the Gulf area. This year’s Jordan rally does not include the group N world championship. If things go well we should be able to challenge for a good result in Jordan on group N.”
“In the local rallies in Jordan Roger has the edge especially that last year he won all stages. Ammar Hijazi is very fast on Roger’s X-skoda, and there is Mazen Tantash, which I was able to beat in the last local rally last year. I hope this year we do a good job in Jordan too”
MotorTune and Roger Feghali
Nicolas is enjoying a great relationship with MotorTune and Roger Feghali. “We are working hard with MotorTune, we have no complaints and Roger has been great. From Roger we take his experience and his guidance I think we are on the right track.”
Other motorsports
Amiouni doesn’t seem to fancy circuit driving although he used to do Karting from a very small age. “I’m not into F1 that much and circuit racing, I’m more into rallying, that my passion” says Nicolas.
Nicolas predicts a very hot WRC season with the new cars. He believes that the rally of Sweden was a very good example about what we are going to see. Amiouni believes that although Loeb had a slow start in Sweden he will be having a very big comeback in Mexico.
Amiouni has his eyes on the junior series too, especially with the Pirelli and group N, and his future plans to be able to compete in 2012.
Sponsors
When talking about sponsors Amiouni amusingly says: “we have no sponsors yet. My only sponsor is my father and I would like to thank him so much for all his support.”
2011 rally program for Nicolas:
Lebanese Spring Rally (19-20 March)
Jordan WRC (14-15-16 April)
Jordan local rally 1 (6 May)
Lebanese Cedars Rally (4-5 June)
Jordan local rally 2 (24 June)
Jordan local rally 3 (21 July)
Rally of Lebanon (16-17-18 September)
Cyprus IRC (3-4-5 November)
3 European events (to be assigned)
(All the photos are the property of Nicolas Amiouni fan page on facebook)
