Overdrive Racing will be represented by the defending FIA World Cup champion Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah and this year’s championship leader Aron Domzala at the forthcoming Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.
The event is regarded as the toughest round of the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies, takes place over six days and starts with a timed super special stage at the Al-Forsan International Circuit on April 1.
Five gruelling selective sections follow through some of the remotest deserts on the Arabian Peninsula, while the finishing ceremonies will be held at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi on April 6.
Al-Attiyah and French navigator Matthieu Baumel are in a rich vein of form with their Toyota Hilux and have given Overdrive Racing seven successive victories on rounds of the FIA World Cup, dating back to Al-Attiyah’s second ever victory in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge last April. He has gone on to record subsequent victories in Qatar, Spain, Italy, Poland, Morocco in 2016 and Dubai last month and is unbeaten anywhere in this type of racing discipline with the exception of the Dakar Rally in January.
Taking the win on the recent Dubai International Baja, the first of two events to be organised by the Automobile and Touring Club of the United Arab Emirates in the space of a month, has lifted the Qatari to second in the FIA World Cup Drivers’ standings behind his team-mate Domzala.
“This is one of my favourite desert rallies and one where you have to be fully focused and physically fit to succeed,