RUGBY MEETS RALLY

Legend Horan joins Al Qasimi to tackle shakedown

Abu Dhabi’s Khalid Al Qasimi has finished out of the points Down Under but he has won the admiration of a sporting great – rugby legend Tim Horan.

Horan briefly tackled the co-driver’s duties in Al Qasimi’s BP Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team Ford Focus.

Al Qasimi took Horan for the ride of his life on a couple of laps of the opening ‘shakedown’ stage of the Repco Rally Australia in Murwillumbah south of the Gold Coast.

At speeds topping over 180kph, Horan was spun around the dusty gravel tracks by the Emirati rally ace. He hadn’t been roughed up as much since the days when he took on the mighty All Blacks and Springboks.

“It was an amazing experience to be in the car alongside Khalid, you realise how good he is and you place your trust in his ability and just enjoy the experience,” the man who won two World Cup medals. 

Horan’s Repco Rally Australia ‘Shakedown’ gig with Al Qasimi drew fans from near and far. After all, this was a man who crawled out of his sick bed to be player of the match in a World Cup final in 1999.

Horan might not be a rally driver but Al Qasimi could see he was a man who thrived on pressure. He said the thing that he noticed about Horan was his “compsure”, adding, “It was great to have Tim in the passenger seat, to have one of the greatest Australian rugby players in the car with me and to personally give him a completely different sporting experience was a thrill for me as well”.

Before taking to the co-driver’s seat, Horan got some last minute tips from Al Qasimi’s co-driver Michael Orr:

“Michael took me through his role as a co-driver, letting me know exactly what to expect from the lower seat position and how it would feel during the high speed testing session. It was fantastic to get an insight from him into the importance of his role and how vital a co-driver’s pace notes are during a rally, it’s all about team work”, Horan said.

Repco Rally Australia, across 340 competitive kilometres of the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, marked the tenth of 12 WRC rounds.

Al Qasimi had been lying 12th before the rally and had been hoping to push his way into the top 10 but he was dogged by bad luck.

He fought his way to a valiant 20th position despite an enforced retirement on day one when his car hit a tree stump. Two tough days saw him claw back an impressive 10 places.

On the rally’s final day, Al Qasimi battled some of the event’s toughest conditions following a sleep-depriving 5am start.

But in beating closest competitors in the Drivers’ Championship, Conrad Rautenbach and Federico Villagra, in five of the first speed tests, Al Qasimi finished within the top eight drivers in all but one of the stages.

“I am of course disappointed not to have finished within the points, but for me it was about more than just the rally. Australia is a key market to my main backer, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, and I happy to be able to visit both the East Coast and Sydney to help spread awareness of Abu Dhabi as a tourist destination,” he said.

Five-time world champion Sebastien Loeb was stripped of his victory and relegated to second place in the Rally of Australia because of a technical infringement with his Citroen car.

A spokeswoman for the governing FIA said stewards had ruled that the front anti-roll bar links on the three Citroen cars, driven by Frenchman Loeb, Spain’s Dani Sordo and France’s Sebastien Ogier, did not conform to the regulations.

As a result, all three drivers were handed one minute penalties. That meant Loeb, who had won the rally by 12.5 seconds, was relegated from first to second behind Ford’s championship leader Mikko Hirvonen.

Sordo remained in third place despite the penalty while Ogier dropped from fourth to fifth. The spokeswoman said Citroen had the right to lodge an appeal.