The erstwhile UAE National Rally Championship makes a comeback this Friday after a break of four years, but will henceforth be known as the UAE Desert Championship.
The four-round championship will be staged over a circular 15km route in the Dubai desert.
The Baja-style event has attra-cted a strong response from drivers and riders, and a final entry list which will be published before Friday’s start is expected to include over 50 cars, buggies, bikes and quads.
Among the top challengers in the cars category will be one of the UAE’s most experienced rally drivers, Sheikh Abdullah Al Qassimi, and fellow Emiratis Ahmed Al Fahim and Nabil Al Shamsi.
Leading contenders in the bikes class include multiple Middle East motocross champion Steve Blackney and David Mabbs, better known for his exploits on four wheels in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.
With the bikes and quads competing in a two-hour morning session, Mabbs will also compete in the cars category which runs alongside the buggies in the afternoon.
Organised by the Emirates Motor Sport Federation (EMSF) and sanctioned by the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE (ATCUAE), the national motor sport authority, the UAE Desert Championship capitalises on the country’s natural assets for the staging of cross country events.
“We have some of the best terrain in the world for off-road rallying, and this offers great potential for the new championship to establish itself, and take the sport back to where it belongs,” said ATCUAE President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.
“There was a growing demand for a new series of competitive events run in a natural environment, with an emphasis on safety. One of our priorities is to discourage young people from racing on the roads and bring their love for speed into a controlled motor sport environment.”
With practice prohibited, the route for the opening round , running in the Al Yufrah 2 desert area south of Dubai, will be revealed to competitors on Friday morning before the bikes and quads go into action between 09:00-11:00, followed by the cars and buggies from 14:30-16:30.
The short rally with a marked route is one of three event formats to be used in the series. Some rounds will consist of medium track events run over five laps of approximately 40kms each , while others will be long track events of around 200kms, both requiring the use of GPS for navigation.
The longer events will provide good preparation for those competitors contesting the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which marks its 24th edition next April as a round of both the FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rallies and the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship.
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