June 30, 2015 – The Qatar Rally Team are celebrating another fine race win after coming out on top at the Italian Baja. Nasser Al-Attiyah and co-driver Mathieu Baumel used their impressive pace to dominate from start to finish in northern Italian. This latest victory keeps the duo on course to win this season’s prestigious FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup.
Nasser and Mathieu arrived in the Pordenone region of Italy off the back of an amazing sequence of results in the past six months that has seen them win the 2015 Dakar Rally as well as WRC2, Cross-Country Rally World Cup and Middle East Rally Championship events. Friday’sopening 12km prologue stage of the Italian Baja demonstrated that the pair were in the mood to continue their winning momentum as they clocked the fastest time of the day.
On Saturday and Sunday the real challenges arrived with nearly 400km of timed racing crammed into just 48 hours. Demanding gravel tracks and riverbeds to traverse plus limited time for the pit crew to work on the car between stages meant intense concentration was required from the entire team over the course of the weekend.
World Cup contender Vladimir Vasilyev (5th at the last Dakar) was at the wheel of one of many cars that fell victim to the unpredictable nature of the race on Saturday as the Russian dropped 40 minutes behind Nasser and Mathieu who maintained their overall lead.
Sunday’s brace of timed special stages were raced on the same route used the previous day, allowing Mathieu to provide Nasser with comprehensive pace notes from the co-driver’s seat of their flying Red Bull Mini. The expert navigation combined with Nasser’s experience on tight WRC style tracks paid dividends for the Qatar Rally Team as they clinched their win with two stage wins on the final day of the contest.
A total of four stage wins out of five at the Italian Baja tells its own story of how the reigning Dakar champions asserted themselves on this event. However, the shorter format of the race with stages of under 100km did not allow the pair to build significant gaps so this victory is more a testament to their ability to focus under pressure rather than rely on flat out speed to get the job done.
This latest win provides the perfect platform for Nasser and Mathieu to continue their assault on the 2015 FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup as the series stays in Europe for races in Spain, Hungary and Poland in the coming months