Morocco Rally: the Loeb-Al-Attiyah duel resumes with a vengeance

The break was long, but the World Championship of rally-raid (W2RC) resumes its rights for the final straight of the 2022 season at Rally du Maroc this Saturday October 1st. The competition organized by ASO is marked by a fight between Sébastien Loeb-Fabian Lurquin (BRX) et Nasser Al-Attiyah-Mathieu Baumel (Toyota) depuis l’hiver dernier.

Winner of the Dakar in Saudi Arabia, the Qatari-French duo stumbled at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge at the beginning of March. The nine-time world rally champion took advantage of this and even overtook them in the general classification thanks to a sixth position. The gap is tiny: one point before the last two meetings of the year, in Morocco then in Andalusia (Spain, October 18-23).

💥 @SebastienLoeb VS @AlAttiyahN
🔎📊The duel in numbers!# W2RC #FIA pic.twitter.com/lTW81bSl8d

- World Rally-Raid Championship @ 🏍 (@ OfficialW2RC) September 26, 2022

“We will focus on our battle with Sébastien”, explains Mathieu Baumel, Nasser Al-Attiyah's navigator, during the press conference reserved for the media present in Agadir on Friday September 30. “It's great, it started in the Dakar, it continued in Abu Dhabi, with problems for both at the same time, in the same place, in the dunes of the first special. We fell into a hole which caused technical problems (broken triangle, 11th place).

We are one point behind in the Championship, there are two rallies remaining, it's going to be a great fight, we're having fun. » Mathieu Baumel is also the record holder for victories at the Rallye du Maroc; the Frenchman has seven successes (6 with Al-Attiyah and 1 with Bernhard ten Brinke) compared to six for Nasser Al-Attiyah. Sébastien Loeb, for his part, is less used to it: the Alsatian has only registered his name in the Moroccan rankings twice (2nd in 2017, 14th in 2015 with Peugeot ).

Le vainqueur du Rallye Monte-Carlo 2022 avec M-Sport Ford est arrivé dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi au Maroc. Aussi, il a laissé le soin à son copilote Fabian Lurquin de préparer le terrain face à la presse.

“Being a point ahead since Abu Dhabi in March has allowed us to go several months without pressure... no I'm kidding, it's like we're tied on points and it's all starting again this weekend, declared the Belgian.

Refreshed and ready in BRX red to go through any valley on the rally; here's Seb and Fabian's Prodrive Hunter in all his magnificent glory for the @MarocRally (I.e.

Isn't
It
Just
Fantastic 😎#cantstoplookingatit@SebastienLoeb @prodrive #teambahrain 🇧🇭#rallyraid pic.twitter.com/Tone9guueG

- Bahrain Raid Xtreme (@BRaidXtreme) September 30, 2022

Morocco is Nasser's garden, which shows the scale of the task that awaits us with Sébastien! This will already be our third race together in the Hunter T1+. It would be great to be able to offer Sébastien a 10th world title at the end of the month. The pressure in the championship, and riding with such a star, I'm starting to get used to it. »

Sébastien Loeb still had time to send a short statement to the Moroccan audience. “We won the Extreme E race in Chile for X44 (team hired by Prodrive. Editor’s note), so the objective will be to continue in the same way for Morocco. The test with the Hunter in Morocco two weeks ago was positive; we had a good feeling with the car and it was reliable, so everything is working well at the moment.

We know that Nasser will be quick in Morocco. At the moment Fabian and I are in the lead and that's good, but the gap is very small so we have to fight hard to get a few more good points for the title. This is our objective for Morocco. »

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