Bassel Abou Hamdan’s quest to win the front-wheel drive category in the 30th Spring Rally came to an early unfortunate end when he went off track on the event’s first special stage in Nahr Ibrahim. Luckily, both Bassel and co-driver Firas Elias emerged unhurt from the incident. Abou Hamdan was contesting the Spring Rally on a new Citroen DS3 R3.
“It was a slippery stage, so we slid and touched the wall. I did not have rear wet weather tyres because we only got the car yesterday, so we used rear dry weather tyres and front wet weather tyres. We slid, touched the wall and the engine stalled. As I was trying turned to turn the engine back on, the anti-lag system kicked in and pushed the car off track.”