Q&A: Nasser Al-Attiyah
Winner of the Argentina-based 2011 Dakar rally, Nasser Al-Attiyah is an expert in tricky road conditions, and his experience showed last weekend when he won the WRC2 category of Rally Argentina by more than five minutes.
Here’s what he had to say about the win – and the way his rivals forgot to use their brains....
Q: Nasser, congratulations on the result, the second win for you in a row in WRC2. You took victory in Portugal just a couple of weeks ago and now in Argentina. How are you feeling?
NA-A: “I’m really so happy to win here. We have been really very clever all this weekend. We saved our car and we tried to do our best because the race was very hard. It was not easy but we found a really good pace and we led by a big gap. After that we controlled the pace all this weekend. It is a great win.”
Q:You said you controlled the whole weekend. Were there any issues at all?
NA-A: “No, although that’s not to say it was easy. I think most of the drivers did not use the brain here. You know because when you push you get a lot of trouble and we have been really clever.”
Q: Before the rally you said SS2 would be extremely difficult. Did you find Sunday’s El Condor even worse?
NA-A: “Actually, Sunday’s stages were slower. There was no high speed like stage 2. SS2 is really fast and very rough with a lot of rocks and ditches. In general the rally is really hard but on Sunday the situation was very difficult because there was a lot of fog and it was raining.”
Q: This looks good now for the WRC2 Championship; two wins in a row. You must be very confident for the season ahead?
NA-A: “Yes. After Portugal, we worked a lot to keep going and to get a good result in this race. We found ourselves really in a good position. We had the first place all weekend without any problems and we are quite happy.”