Defending FIA Middle East rally champion Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah and WRC star Kris Meeke are the top seeds in an 18-car international entry from nine nations (subject to FIA approval) announced by the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) for next week’s Qatar International Rally.
The opening round of the 2021 FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) will run under the strict Covid-19 protocols in force in Qatar and has moved forward by one day. The start ceremony is now at Katara on Friday evening (January 29th), followed by two days of gravel action in the Qatar deserts on January 30th-31st.
Bouncing back from the Dakar
Al-Attiyah and Meeke had contrasting fortunes at the recent Dakar Rally and both want to return to winning ways in Qatar. Al-Attiyah partners French navigator Matthieu Baumel in his usual Autotek Motorsport-run Volkswagen R5, while Meeke and navigator Sebastian Marshall contest their first MERC round in a Škoda Fabia R5.
Al-Attiyah is chasing a record-breaking 15th win on his home event and a staggering 76th career MERC success. A series of punctures cost him a possible Dakar win last week, and he settled for second overall.
Meeke drove a PH Sport Zephyr in the T3 category for lightweight prototypes at the Dakar, winning the Prologue and final stage on a difficult debut in which niggles and technical problems cost him many hours and penalties. He finished 41st in the SSV section.
Meeke’s speed in traditional special stage rallies is far more impressive, though, and he should push Al-Attiyah hard on the Qatar desert stages. He won five WRC rallies between 2015 and 2017 and a similar number of International Rally Challenge (IRC) rounds in 2009 and 2010. His most recent wins came on the contrasting WRC rounds in Mexico and Spain in 2017, and he left the WRC in November 2019 after a season with the Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team.
After my first experience of the Dakar, I am now looking forward to taking part in a traditional special stage rally in the desert. I’ve wanted to take part in one of these rallies for a long time and to compete against Nasser and the Middle East drivers will be a new challenge for me and Seb. The terrain will be new to us and I hear that we will need to be careful to avoid punctures. But we are both looking forward to this new and exciting challenge.
Kris Meeke
The rest of the field
Seven R5s feature in the field, with Qatar’s Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari, Nasser Khalifa Al-Atya, Sheikh Suhaim Al-Thani and Khalid Al-Suwaidi and Oman’s Abdullah Al-Rawahi also likely to challenge for the podium.
Eight crews contest MERC 2 in Mitsubishis and Subarus in the NR4 group. Defending champion Meshari Al-Thefiri leads the field against fellow Kuwaiti Jassim Al-Muqahwi, Oman’s Zakariya Al-Amri and Zakariya Al-Aufi, Lebanon’s Shadi Al-Fakih and Ahmad Khaled, and local drivers Rashid Al-Mohannadi and Mohammed Al-Attiyah.
Lebanon’s Henry Kahy again targets the MERC 3 title in his two-wheel-drive Škoda Fabia.
Qatar’s Khalid Al-Mohannadi and Lebanon’s Jad Al-Aawar are taking advantage of the rule allowing FIA-homologated T4 vehicles on MERC gravel rallies, entering a Polaris and a Can-Am Maverick X3 respectively, subject to FIA scrutineering.
The QMMF will also run a national event behind the main rally, with Qatar’s Ahmed Allouh and Ahmed Al-Mohannadi on the draft list. The rally is held under the chairmanship of QMMF President Abdulrahman Al-Mannai, senior committee member Abdulrazaq Al-Kuwari and QMMF Executive Director Amro Al-Hamad.