– Three MINI ALL4 Racing pairings in the top five
– Difficult navigation and tracks
With three stages of Qatar’s Sealine Rally contested, all the three MINI ALL4 Racing vehicles hold top-five positions. Yazeed Al-Rajhi (KSA) and Timo Gottschalk (GER) currently are second in the overall standings, just close behind the leading Nasser Al-Attiyah from Qatar.
Behind them, the Russian pairing Vladimir Vasilyev / Konstantin Zhiltsov and Ricardo Porém (POR) / Tom Colsoul (BEL) follow in third and fourth positions, while Jutta Kleinschmidt and Philipp Beier (both GER) in the buggy currently hold a really fine sixth place. In addition, to the rocky roads that caused numerous tyre damages, the navigation also proved extremely demanding.
The battle for the win now is a duel between Al-Rajhi in the MINI ALL4 Racing and local hero Al-Attiyah. Currently, the gap of the Saudi to the leader amounts to nine minutes. A damaged tyre and a navigation mistake in stage two cost him several minutes and on stage three, he and his German navigator Gottschalk got lost once again what cost them another minute. “We were doing really well throughout the day but then we took the wrong way at a diversion,