After 2 eventful rallies for Lebanon’s bright rally youngster, Nicolas Amiouni, he is back in Lebanon to prepare for the upcoming Local rally in Jordan. Amiouni who was unlucky both in Cyprus and France is looking forward to the new events and believes that those 2 weeks gave him a lot of experience. This time around Nicolas Amiouni had experienced co-driver Joseph Mattar next to him in the car to benefit, from his broad experience.
In a small chat with Nicolas he told us about his 2 experiences and what happened exactly. We started our conversation talking about Cyprus, and upon asking him to round up his rally there, Nicolas told us that he was unlucky suffering punctures in 4 tyres on the first day but he was upbeat stating “although we suffered a lot because of the tyres, we have improved our pace a lot. We reduced the gap a lot between us and our competitors and our participation is much better than that of last year.” After he started the second day under the super rally regulations Nicolas suffered a mechanical failure and had to retire.
Nicolas spent this whole season driving with co-driver Chady Beyrouthy, but opted to change in Cyprus and France because Mattar has much more experience, and he can benefit from him a lot. “Joseph has great experience and I can benefit from him but it’s not difficult for me to change co-drivers, and when Chadi has more experience we can also rely on him.” Nicolas said.
Moving to the subject of the French Local Rally, ‘French Rallye du Rouergue’ Nicolas was driving a totally new car to him. He never drove a front wheel drive car before, and as he stated “the whole thing is a big new challenge. New roads, new regulations, new car, and many things to learn from.” Amiouni drove a Citroen C2 R2 Atmospheric, with a sequential gearbox. “The car is very nice to drive and very smooth. It is also very fast so it was also a good experience.” Stated Amiouni.
Amiouni drove the first leg impressively scoring some amazing results but was hit with confusion in the regulations. “We got a yellow flag in the middle of the stages and according to international rules the car should slow down until the finish of the stage and this is what we did. Eventually we shouldn’t have because we saw that many guys were passing next to us in top speed. After the end of the stage we learned that the French rules are different than those of the international ones. We lost around 1:30 min, which means around 20 positions in the overall standing. Again we didn’t let this hamper our experience so we continued progress. On stage 6 which is the 2nd stage in day 2 we had a mechanical failure and had to retire. We tried to enter the last under super rally but they wouldn’t let us, since again under the French regulations if you are not registered in the championship you cannot undergo super rally.” Amiouni Said.
Amiouni drove for PH Sport, a famous French team and was accompanied with multiple rally champion Roger Feghali who guided Amiouni throughout the way and gave him all the technical support.
Amiouni’s season will continue with a local Jordanian Rally, in addition to a local French Rally ‘Rallye du Mont Blanc’ and the Rally of Lebanon.