Saudi driver Essa Al Dossari is gearing up to participate in the third edition of the Dubai International Baja, the second round of the 2019 FIA World Cup for Cross Country Bajas, the event will take place from seventh to ninth March. As usually, Essa will compete under his “ED Racing Team” banner.
Recently, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has separated the World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies into two divisions, “Cross Country” for events that take over three days and “Baja” for short events.
The 2019 World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies includes four Cross Country rounds, as Turkmenistan’s round organisers cancelled their efforts to host the fifth round. While Baja division includes eight rounds.
Al Dossari will take part with his co-driver the Emirati Ali Hassan Obaid, in Nissan Navara Pickup T1, prepared and tuned by the South African “Red Lined Motoring Adventure” team. Dubai Baja will be the first appearance of Al Dossari in the Desert Rallies events, since he won 2019 Hail International Rally title earlier this year, for the second time in a row in his career.
Al Dossari took part last year’s Dubai Baja edition, but his car rolled on during the competitions and the car’s roll-cage damaged, which ended his bid on the event title. The car was new, and not suitable the Arabian deserts nature and sand dunes, which affected its response and performance. The South African team prepared it to be more suitable for the South African terrain, mostly dirt and gravel tracks.
Following the incident, Al Dossari returned the car to the Red Lined’s headquarters to repair and re-tuned it to be more suitable for the desert terrain and tracks in the Arabian region.
Since that, he has achieved many impressive results during last year and looks forward to delivering strong performance and compete for the top positions, based on the experience gained during 2018.
Furthermore, ED Racing Team will participate with a second car, piloted by Emirati driver Abdullah Hreiz, to double the chances for the team to achieve good results.
Al Dossari said: “We are quite ready to go to Dubai Baja; we did not know the competitors yet, but we hope the competition will be nice,”
“We look forward to make up last year’s disappointment we had experienced when the car overturned during the competition, which prevented us from completing the round. Since then, we have gained more experience in the Desert Rallis, and re-configure the car to be more suitable for the region’s events. Alhamdulillah, we won Hail International Rally 2018 and 2019 and Jordan Baja 2018.”
This Rally has a deep-rooted history. The first rally was held in 1981 and won by the late Kuwaiti driver Tareq Al Wazzan. Also, the rally was one of the founding rounds of the Middle East Rally Championship in 1984, until 2015, when the last edition was held.
After that, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, ATCUAE President and former rally driver, suggested an idea of switching from conventional rallying to the Baja format. Following the successful hosting of the candidate event in 2016, the Dubai International Baja included in the 2017 FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rallies, Where it is held annually a few weeks before Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge – a cross-country rally. But this season considered the second round of the Baja championship after the Northern Forest Rally in Russia.
Dubai Baja will comprise two special stages through the demanding Al Qudra desert terrain on Friday and Saturday, 8 – 9 March. With a total distance of 607 kilometres, 407 kilometres are selective sections and 200 kilometres liaison. The Dubai Autodrome will be the Dubai Baja headquarter and the finishing point.