July 26, 2015 – Abu Dhabi team leader Sheikh Khalid bin Faisal Al Qassimi put some fantastic performance at the end of the Spanish Baja Aragón – Round 6 of the FIA Cross Country Rally World Cup finishing the totally new challenge for him amongst the big league in the top 10 list. Surpassing all barriers and obstacles which effected day 2 results, Al Qassimi and co-driver Boulanger crossed the finish line after a 644 km of tough race conditions with a total time of 9:19:07.0 hours.
Day 3 (final) consisted of a 181.1 km stage where Al Qassimi successfully finished in 6th place with a time of 2:28:39.0 and the fastest amongst Overdrive racing team, securing a top 10 position in 9th Place.
Aboard modified Toyota Hilux by Overdrive Racing, Al Qassimi managed to secure 7th overall out of 70 participating cars in Baja Aragón Super Special Stage and 13th overall by the end of leg 2 marking his name amongst the big competitors. Day 2 consisted of 2 stages; the first (152.220 Km) of which Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi came in 15th place with 2:12:49.0, securing provisional 14th place overall. Resuming the race after a 30 minutes pit stop, with stage 2 (305.560 Km) which amounted to over 4 hours of non-stop racing, Al Qassimi gained a position to finish stage 2 in 13th place with a time of 4:33.18.0 securing provisional 13th place overall after day 2 (Total time: 6:50:28.0).
The result would have been better, but unfortunately the co-driver suffered from a sudden illness which paid its toll on his and Sheikh Khalid’s focus, hence the result.
Speaking about the completely new experience at Baja Aragón Al Qassimi said: “It was a great experience for me and I’ve enjoyed it a lot, unfortunately leg 2 was not the best so we decided today to focus on the stage and drive in balanced rhythm, the strategy paid off as we were really fast in the 1st 100km of the stage and we caught up with the competitors but we had to drive behind them stuck in the dust for around 80Km. All in all the result was good indeed, it could have been better of course but at the end of the day we enjoyed the event and gained the experience we want.”