00:03Welcome to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, over 400 metres below sea level.
00:07This weekend it's the Jordan Rally, round three of the FIA Middle East Rally Championship,
00:11with motorsport resuming after the recent hostilities in the region.
00:14This weekend we have 17 FIA entries, joined by 10 in the National Rally, taking place
00:19over two days, a dozen special stages in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas, and the
00:24top seed is once again Nasa Sala Alatea, bidding for an 18th win here in Jordan, but
00:29at the moment he lies fourth in the Middle East Championship.
00:33After winning Oman, we go back to Qatar and we were leading, and then we had a problem
00:41with the new rim, which was a mistake by manufacturer, but okay, it was not easy, we lose a lot
00:51of
00:51points, but now we are here, we are really well prepared, I think we need to be clever
00:58you know, to win this race, at least to have a good point, because we don't know if Lebanon
01:05will happen, and also Cyprus, if this will happen, I don't know, and then the last race
01:11will be in Saudi Arabia, this will be part of the world champion WRC and Middle East, and then
01:19will be more points in this race, and just we need to be clever, you know, if we can win
01:25here,
01:26it will be more easy for us when we go to Saudi Arabia, and to fight with the top driver.
01:32On paper, Alatia's closest challenger should be Oman's Abdullah Al-Wahi, but at the moment
01:36he's fifth in the Championship, he too had problems on the first two rounds of the series,
01:40and he badly needs the points here in Jordan as well.
01:44Yeah, it's always a good feeling to be back to where I actually started rallying, so my
01:49first Middle East Rally Championship was here in Jordan, and it's always nice to be back,
01:55one of the toughest stages in the region, and we're always quite fast here, and I'm always
02:02looking forward to Jordan's stages, because they're tough, and very technical as well, and
02:10the competition obviously is very high with Nasr, and for the past two years, we managed
02:16to be very close to him, hopefully this year with a new car, we could maybe take another
02:24step forward, but yeah, since my last injury, we didn't have enough time with the car, and
02:32we did two rallies, but I still don't feel comfortable enough on the car I have now, but we're working
02:40really hard with the team to have the best setup that I need. Obviously the old car, we had
02:48a lot of time to set it up the way I wanted to, but hopefully this time we'll get it
02:54right,
02:55and we can put a nice show as we did last year.
02:58Qatari veteran Nasr Khalifa Alatiyah competed here over 30 years ago, and in fact finished
03:03second in the Championship in 1993. Fast forward 33 years, he leads the Championship by seven
03:08points remarkably, after three rounds, and he too is here in contention in a Ford Fiesta.
03:14And also Hamzah al-Bakashab from Saudi Arabia is his closest challenger at the moment, just
03:18seven points behind. He comes here with Lorcan Moore from Ireland in a Toyota, badly needing
03:23to try and follow in his father's footsteps of winning the Middle East title himself.
03:27Abdul, his father won here in 1995.
03:29First of all, I would like to thank my sponsors for giving me this opportunity. Jamil Motorsports
03:34have been with me since the very beginning, so I would like to thank them for that. Today
03:39we had a look at the Shakedown stage. It's really, it's actually a part of one of the
03:43stages, Gawda. So it was good to feel the car there. The car feels amazing. I thank the
03:49team and Roger for that. Feels good, feels good. I'm actually very happy.
03:52The last time a Jordanian won here was in 2004 when Amjad Farah remarkably won on the super
03:58special stage when Hamid al-Wahibi broke his engine on a jump. Tracker Johan is the best
04:03chance really of a local win this weekend. He has two MERC2 wins on the trot. Leaves the
04:08category by some distance, but knows realistically that his chances of winning here depend upon
04:13what happens ahead of him with the rally. Definitely feeling confident this weekend. The car and
04:17the team, everything's really great. Honestly, preparations are going really well. We've done
04:22the local event just four weeks ago, and we were able to win the event. So it's really
04:30good, honestly. It's similar to day one of the rally. So it should be good, honestly.
04:35And the temperatures might be going down, which is really good as well. But yeah, we're going
04:40to see, honestly, the R5 cars are going to bring a lot of rocks in front of us. So that's
04:45going to be the only problem. And other than that, honestly, all is well. The stages are really
04:50nice. They're really good. There's a new stage as well that we're not familiar with. There
04:56are some parts that we're familiar with, but there's a huge section that's quite new. And
05:01yeah, other than that, yeah, the championship is going well. We are leading. And third, I
05:06think, overall, which is really good as well. And yeah, we're going to see how it goes.
05:10And yeah, we're confident.
05:12So the scene is set now for the next two days with 12 special stages awaiting in the Jordan
05:17Valley and Dead Sea areas. A fascinating weekend awaits with NASA the
05:20top seed and the favorite. But who knows, on these fantastic stages here in Jordan, anything
05:24can really happen.
