Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi clinched his second points finish of the year in the World Rally Championship (WRC) on Sunday, finishing 10th at the Rally Sardinia as Volkswagen’s Sebastien Ogier claimed his fourth win of the season.
The Emirati had been down as low as 21st on the opening day as he struggled with mechanical problems in his Abu Dhabi Citroen DS3 RRC.
A combination of his car being repaired and problems hitting some of his rivals saw him fight his way back up the order during the 23-stage rally.
Sheikh Khalid, who was 16th at the end of the first day, moved up to 11th on Saturday and began yesterday’s final four stages just 38.6 seconds adrift of Yazeed Al Rajhi.
Sheikh Khalid had been primed for the challenge of making up the time to overhaul his Saudi Arabian rival for the final points scoring position over just 45.8 kilometres of road that made up the final four stages.
The fight proved rather easier than anticipated as Al Rajhi stopped on Stage 20, the opening stage of the day, allowing Sheikh Khalid to inherit 10th spot.
The result, which comes two months after Sheikh Khalid had finished sixth in Argentina, puts the Emirati on nine points for the season and has him 12th in the WRC standings.
It is the third successive year that Sheikh Khalid, who is mixing competing in the WRC with a full Middle East Rally Championship (Merc) programme, has finished 10th at Sardinia, and he acknowledged he had found this year’s rally tough going.
“Really difficult,” he told www.wrc.com of his experience over the competition, which began on Thursday at Cagliari.
“Lots of rocks and surprises on the stages. I tried to balance my pace with the conditions.”
It was a frustrating weekend for the Abu Dhabi Citroen team as Mads Ostberg and Kris Meeke, Sheikh Khalid’s teammates, both found trouble.
Ostberg finished in fifth place, but it was a disappointing final day for the Norwegian as he had begun the day in third spot.
He went off the road on Stage 20 and, although he was able to continue, he had damaged his car’s brakes, which were a problem for the rest of the rally.
He would lose positions to Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans, and he was 54-seconds slower than the fastest time on the final stage as he finished only 16.6 seconds ahead of sixth-placed Jari-Matti Latvala.
“OK, it is nice to keep this place, but I’m disappointed to lose third,” Ostberg said of his late drama.
“It’s been a very hard rally. A big mistake from me earlier and I’m sorry to the team for that.”
A bigger disappointment came Meeke’s way as he finished the weekend pointless in the drivers’ standings after finishing in 24th place.
The Briton’s rally was wrecked on Friday’s Stage 2 when he went off and damaged the suspension on his car, forcing him out of the rest of day’s opening leg.
“It all went wrong very early unfortunately,” said Meeke, who did at least contribute points for his team in the constructors’ competition.
“Today was just about getting around and collecting some points for the team.”
The poor outing drops Meeke to seventh in the WRC standings.
Ostberg moved up to second, albeit 66 points adrift of championship leader Ogier.
The Frenchman’s Volkswagen won by three minutes, 5.5 seconds from Hyundai’s Hayden Padden.
Ogier, who is bidding for a third world title in a row, said: “I’m very happy because I didn’t expect such a result here.
“My times gradually got better without me having to force too much. Everything went to plan. The car was perfect and so were the weather conditions.”
The next round of the season is in Poland on the weekend of July 3.
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