April 2, 2017 – Roger Feghali defied the bad weather conditions during the opening round of the 2017 Lebanese Rally Championship, the 33rd Spring Rally, to score a commanding victory.
Driving a Mitsubishi Evo X R4, Roger won 7 of the day’s 8 stages to claim victory by 1 minute 41 seconds over second-place finisher and Group N winner Nicolas Amiouni, who was locked in a tight battle with Tamer Ghandour (SS2 winner) until the latter lost a valuable amount of time after spinning out once and collecting 2 punctures.
Ziad Feghali rounded out the top 3 and ranked 2nd in Group N, followed by Rodrigue Rahi in 4th place overall and 3rd in Group N.
2016 Group N champion Eddy Abou Karam finished 4th overall and 2nd in RC2 on his debut in the Hyundai i20 R5.
Patrick Njeim put in a stellar performance in the Peugeot 208 R2 to win the front-wheel drive class and RC4 category, while his younger brother Matthias triumphed in RC5 and Henry Massaad went home with an RC3 class win.
Overall classification after 8 special stages:
01. Roger Feghali (Mitsubishi Evo X R4), 1h 02m 21.6s
02. Nicolas Amiouni (Mitsubishi Evo X Group N), +1m41.5s
03. Ziad Feghali (Mitsubishi Evo IX Group N), +2m50.4s
04. Rodrigue Rahi (Mitsubishi Evo IX Group N), +3m17.9s
05. Eddy Abou Karam (Hyundai i20 R5), +3m29.1s
06. Joseph Hindy (Mitsubishi Evo X R4), +5m16.7s
07. Raafat Al Mohtar (Mitsubishi Evo IX Group N), +5m55.1s
08. Nadim Halabi (Mitsubishi Evo VIII Group N), +6m04.2s
09. Tamer Ghandour (Mitsubishi Evo X R4), +6m16.6s
10. Nabil Abdelhak (Mitsubishi Evo X Group N), +6m51.2s
11. Patrick Njeim (Peugeot 208 R2), +7m22.1s
12. Henry Massaad (Citroen DS3 R3), +8m22.5s
13. Tarek Younis (Mitsubishi Evo IX Group N), +10m12.1s
14. Mshari Al Thefiri (Mitsubishi Evo IX Group N), +15m54.9s
15. Matthias Njeim (Suzuki Swift Sport), +21m31.4s
