ABU DHABI // Three months after the chequered flag fell on the 2014 Middle East Rally Championship (Merc), Emirati driver Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi said he is still furious at the events that saw the title snatched from his grasp.
Sheikh Khalid and Qatar’s Nasser Al Attiyah took their battle to win the regional series to the final race, but when the former won the Dubai International Rally by 0.3 seconds to secure the title, his Qatari rival appealed and the decision was reversed by the FIA several days later.
Sheikh Khalid, who was found guilty by motorsports’ governing body of violating designated driving regulations, has lodged his own appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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“It will never leave my mind,” Sheikh Khalid said at the Kuwait Rally this month. “I won the championship; I am the winner of the 2014 championship. Whatever anyone else says, they can say. They played around with a lot of things, which is not part of the regulations. Now we are waiting for the court to see the case. It will take time, but for me it will never end until justice is done.”
Sheikh Khalid said he had been given no indication by CAS as to when the case will be heard, but the lingering legal wrangle has overshadowed the most closely fought championship in the Merc’s history.
Sheikh Khalid was crowned winner in Dubai and Al Attiyah’s appeal was initially dismissed by UAE organisers but the decision was overturned by international governing body FIA, who in 2013 elected as vice president Nasser bin Khalifa Al Attiyah, who is a family member of the driver for Qatar World Rally Team.
Of the case going to court, Khalifa Al Attiyah, the FIA vice president and head of the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation, said: “To be honest, I am not disappointed … because anything can happen in the Middle East Rally Championship.
“The teams are becoming stronger and we have many manufacturers now participating. You need action and you need people to hear about our stories.
“It brings more excitement and drama to the sport, which is good because motorsport is not the first-choice sport in the region. We like this situation, but it is important it does not reach from the drivers to the organisers level because we don’t need to mix politics with the sport.”
Further questions arose when it was announced in December that the three panel members on the FIA’s International Court of Appeal had convened in Doha and, less than 24 hours after ruling in Al Attiyah’s favour, were each granted a three-year extension of their duties.
Sheikh Khalid, who drives for Abu Dhabi Racing, said of the Qatari FIA vice president: “If he was defending what is right, he would have acted when we went to him and showed him evidence of the other driver doing much worse than cutting corners. Instead, he didn’t take it into consideration.
“For me, that means there is no fairness over there, but it is more the principle now. If you have one chance and you believe in something, you have to hold on to that chance and try to make the most of it.”
Al Attiyah, the driver, has won the opening two rounds of the new Merc season and said he is ready to put the controversy of 2014 behind him.
“We come to race, we do not come to cheat,” he said. “We found the proof that the other driver cut all the corners, we made it through the FIA and they were clear that the guy had not respected the rules, so we won the championship.
“From my side, I don’t have any problem but from his side he does not speak to us. Now I look ahead and focus only on Abu Dhabi.”
The two drivers will meet this weekend when the 25th Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge begins on Saturday at Yas Marina Circuit. The five-day cross-country endurance race is the second round of the FIA Cross Country Rally World Cup and takes place between Saturday and April 2.
gmeenaghan@thenational.ae
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