LUSAIL (Qatar): Local hero Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah and his French navigator Max Delfino managed tyre wear carefully to storm into a 6min 15.3sec lead after the gruelling opening 336.45km selective section at the Qatar International Baja on Friday.
Poland’s Konrad Dąbrowski and Emirati Khalifa Al-Bastaki led the way in the motorcycle and quad categories.
The longest stage of the season in the FIA World Baja Cup didn’t disappoint and offered significant navigational challenges, tyre wear and a high rate of attrition in energy-sapping desert temperatures.
Al-Attiyah opted to run first on the road and made a strong start out of the blocks to carve out a useful early lead over Portugal’s Francisco Barreto, one of the leading FIA World Baja Cup pace-setters. Barreto and his navigator Paulo Fiúza stayed on their coat tails for much of the first half of the stage and, when Al-Attiyah eased his pace to conserve tyre wear on his rear-wheel drive Optimus MD Rallye, Barreto reduced the margin to less than 20 seconds in his SVR Toyota Hilux IMT Evo.
