Words By: Khaled Karam
On the 7th of February, more than 2 years ago we wrote an article under the name of “The MotorTune Phenomena“ and talked about the success story of the Lebanese team founded by Lebanese rally legend Roger Feghali. Back then the team was paving their way to pursue what is NOW looking like a dream come true, for team founders and members.
Last year the team acquired a Ford Fiesta WRC/RRC car, and participated on it in the Cedars Rally. Later on, Motortune officially announced their participation in the World Rally Championship with Jordanian Rally Driver Ala’a Rashid, to become the first all Arab team to do so. The team has already completed several WRC events and Ala’a scored 6 points in the WRC2 Category at the last event in Italy. The team’s declared progressive development, is being realised bit by bit, and the breakthrough in points and results is starting to show. But on the other hand some other breakthroughs are storming at the same time;
- Team Management.
- Driver Development Programs.
- Car Development and Services covering any kind of rally cars.
The lastest accomplishment came along last week with the team acquiring the new Ford Fiesta R5 car. Roger Feghali himself posted pictures on facebook for the car with the “MotorTune Racing” tag on it. It came with no surprise for me, but with much admiration. M-Sport which develops this generation of cars have only developed around 10 models as they claim, and have tried one of them at an ERC event last weekend with Theirry Neuville, so for a Lebanese team to own one of the cars early on, this is something we should look up to. LBCI has displayed the news on their channel 2 days ago declaring that the car will see first action in the Cedars Rally.
This new fact take me back to the year 2011. Back then Roger Feghali gave the Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 10 R4 kit its first ever rally win. The car back then was newly developed with this kit in an attempt to challenge S2000 cars. Roger was the arguably the only man to succeed in the challenge and went on to overcome Nasser Al Attiyah in the 2011 Rally of Lebanon. Nasser was driving a Ford Fiesta S2000 on the event. If we tend to follow the same pattern and if Roger is to drive the car in the Cedars Rally we may see the same EVO 10 R4 scenario repeated.
One noticeable change has been obvious to the eye this year. The team is opting to use the name “Motortune Racing” instead of “Motortune”. Regardless of the change and the decision behind it, we can say that the team is still working hard every day to improve and meet international standards. The change in name has not changed the core.
The team has not only been involved in the simple fact of rallying but also sent a humanitarian and national message in the last Summer Rally displaying the Lebanese Army‘s vinyl designs on the Roger’s winning car.
Some argue that its all about business and in investment is key to success… I say hard work brings success and doing it in what I can see as a class act is outstanding.