The calendar of the Kuwaiti Rally Championship 2013/2014 included five rounds that took place since November 2013 till March this year. The Rally Talsi participant Salah Bin Eidan started in the Championship both with the Škoda Fabia S2000 and the Ford Fiesta R5 cars, and won victory in four out of five rounds thus acquiring the Kuwaiti Champion’s Cup 2014.

The coordinator of the MM-Motorsport Team Kristo Kraag acknowledged to the Rally Talsi organizers that the sportsman wants to facilitate the awareness of rally in Kuwait and the awareness of Kuwait in the rally circles. „Salah Bin Eidan realizes that Qatar and Abu Dhabi emirate have acquired major popularity in the rally circles and wants to achieve something similar,” begins Kristo Kraag. „In order to achieve that Salah Bin Eiden wants to participate in several events in Europe. Already at the beginning of April with Ford Fiesta R5 car he started in the round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) in Portugal and in the WRC2 class took the 16th place (39th place in the absolute valuation).”

„Rally stages in Kuwait differ considerably from the stages we have got used to see in Europe. In the countries of the Middle East rally takes place in desert, and in majority of cases stages consist of straight distances,” continues Kristo Kraag. „We do not have such stages in Europe, therefore during Rally Talsi Salah Bin Eidan will acquire experience in fast, narrow and technically complicated stages. Another important lesson for him will be to write pacenotes.”

Answering to the question about the sportsman’s objective in Rally Talsi, Kristo Kraag revealed that the main objective of Salah Bin Eidan is to reach the finish line, not to damage the car and acquire as vast experience as possible. „Salah Bin Eidan has not established that a particular place is to be taken. However the sportsman decidedly prepares himself for the WRC round Rally d’Italia Sardegna, and each kilometer in the competition regime is significant. We will compare and analyze achievements in each stage in order to get maximum benefit and to prepare as good as possible for the WRC round. Nobody comes to Talsi to have a good rest,” concludes Kristo Kraag.

Salah Bin Eidan will add to the list of champions participating in Rally Talsi and together with the Latvian Rally Champion Aivis Egle (PROSPEED), Lithuanian Rally Champion Ramūnas Čapkauskas (CAPKAUSKAS RACING) and the Belarussian Rally Champion Vytautas Švedas (JUTA RACING) will fight for the Rally Talsi Champions’ Challenge Cup.

We would like to remind that Rally Talsi this year will be the 4th round of the Latvian Rally Championship (LRC) and will be held on 17th and 18th May. As announced before, this year Rally Talsi will bear international significance as in addition to the LRC stage, Talsi will host also the rounds of the Lithuanian Auto Rally Championship (LARC), the Northern Europe Zone (NEZ) Rally Championship and the NEZ Junior Championship. Approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes prior to the rally cars stages will be started also by the historical cars participating in the Youngtimer and Historic regularity race.

Jānis Unbedahts, RA EVENTS. Photo: Robert Tuchowski