The Spring Rally in Lebanon this year finished with mixed feelings for us journalists and for the fans. The first stage took a big chunk of fun out of the rally, and hunted down Red Bull athlete Abdo Feghali who crashed on his return to this rally after years away from Local Rallies in Lebanon, where he was only competing in ROL. The first Stage which was held in Deir El Qamar, took many other casualties too, like Eddy Abou Karam who crashed before the end of the stage and Dany Abou Chakra. The first stage was very determining too, since many drivers suffered from mechanical problems that compromised the rally, the drivers were: Ghassan Khoury who hit his right end of the car and Gilbert Bannout who suffered a problem with one of his rims, in addition to Robert Aaraj who suffered some brake issues starting from this stage till the end of the rally and Chady Fakih who suffered some suspension issues.
In a quick narration of the each category:
The First stage was all about Roger Feghali setting up the pace for the rally, that he went on to comfortabley clinch its victory. The Rally was straight forward for Roger and starting from SS2 the logic was set and he was 49 seconds faster than his closest rival, his teammate Nicolas Amiouni. On Average Roger was increasing his gap every stage by around 35 seconds, a big margin for such a short distance rally.
Amiouni though had a scare in the last stage where he had a puncture and kept on driving aggressively to the finish line trying to avoid losing second place to the trailing Gilbert Bannout.
SS2/SS4 was quite straightforward to all drivers and although the stage is difficult containing a lot of high speed corners and long straights, and it was very challenging to capture every second, most drivers ended these stages with minimum damage..
After Abdo Feghali’s withdrawal from SS1 the Battle for the Group N trophy became interesting. Gilbert Bannout was looking into winning the category and washing off the disappointment of Arsoun Hill Climb and Chafic Boulos wanted to prove that he had the pace to battle Gilbert on his new EVO 10. Gilbert the more experienced of the pair, built a comfortable gap in the first 3 stages and controlled the gap, but Chafic answered well in the last 2 stages to keep the fight on. Gilbert went on to clinch and important win, and Chafic Boulos proved that he has made a big step forward with his new car and has uppered his pace dramatically.
Shifting to another interesting battle, the FWD, category. The battle started very intensely between the trio Bassel Abou Hamdan on the clio RS, Ghassan Khoury on the Clio R3 Access and Robert Aaraj on the Clio R3 Maxi EVO. Bassel Abou Hamdan took the fight to R3s in the first stages on an older car but SS3 hunted him down and stopped him from capitalizing on his performance. After a difficult SS2 for Ghassan Khoury, he went on to win the category comfortably dominating it and taking his car to its 2nd consecutive win after ROL 2012.
In the 1600 cc the competition saw a battle between Imad Mrad on his new Swift and Kamal Dargham on his 206 with Ziad Karanouh furthur away. Both Mrad and Dargham shared spoils in the first 4 stages but Mrad had to slow down in the last stage due to strange sounds coming from his car. Mrad drove his car to the finish line and found out the sounds were coming from the side bumber which had a smal part hitting the ground and made him lose a possible category win.
In general the rally saw some variety in stages and the roads used, but rally fans would have hoped to see more stages KMs driven. Most importantly it ended without any causalities. Congratulations to all the winners!