Dubai: The UAE’s Mohammad Al Beloushi came up with a third straight stage win at the Pharaohs Rally on Thursday.
The race’s toughest and longest day that took competitors south towards Farafra and saw them complete 583km proved tough for competitors who rode through different types of terrain and under difficult navigation conditions.
But Al Beloushi showed once again he was up to the challenge and overcame all obstacles, finishing the stage on top and scoring yet another fastest time.
“It was a beautiful stage, very tough and quite technical in terms of terrain, but the weather was just perfect for riding,” Al Beloushi commented.
On this particularly long day, riders left the bivouac as usual before sunrise and rode for nearly seven hours between the special stage and the long road section at the end of the leg before reaching the rally bivouac to prepare for the next day of racing and allow the teams to work on the machines.
Pharaons Rally which is the third appointment in the FIM Cross Country Rally World Championship calendar is one of the most renowned and prestigious rallies in the world and has earned a reputation for toughness and the number of difficulties competitors have to face every day, challenging them to the extreme and pushing them to their physical and mental limits.
“Navigation was not simple today and I lost — together with other riders — a lot of time trying to find a waypoint that was mistaken in the navigation system,” he said.
Several competitors were affected by the mistaken coordinates registered in the official navigation system. Reacting to some of the complaints, the rally organisers admitted to the involuntary error made by ERTF — the navigation equipment official provider — and reviewed the situation before deciding to cancel the problematic waypoint and remove from the leg results the time lost as per the competitors tracking devices records.
