With the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and the Sealine Cross Country Rally in Qatar contested, the FIA Cross Country Rally World Cup calendar will take the teams to Egypt for the next desert rally: the Pharaons Rally, held from 18th to 24th May, 2014. The X-raid Team is going to contest the event with three MINI ALL4 Racing vehicles, one of them raced by the pairing Vladimir Vasilyev / Konstantin Zhiltsov. The two Russians (135 points) who currently hold a 65-point lead over second-placed Czech Marek Dabrowski want to keep on extending their World-Cup lead.
Having won in Qatar, Nasser Al-Attiyah (QAT) and Mathieu Baumel (FRA) also are determined to once again go for it. And the same applies to Dutch pairing Erik van Loon / Wouter Roosegaar. They contest their second rally with the MINI ALL4 Racing, finished sixth in the first and want to up the ante, in Egypt.
The rally will be started in El Gouna, a seaside town at the Red Sea. From there, the event will take the competitors via Luxor, Dakhla and Baharia to the finish located in Cairo. On Monday, 19th May, a five-kilometre special-stage will determine the starting order. Over the course of the following five stages, the teams will cover a total distance of 2304 kilometres, with 1800 of them representing the special-stage distance.
For the MINI ALL4 Racing of Vasilyev, the Pharaons Rally represents the end of a long-haul trip. In mid-March, X-raid shipped the car by truck and ship to Abu Dhabi. From there, another ship took it to Qatar and after the Sealine Rally it was loaded on another freighter. Destination: Egypt! But after the Pharaons Rally, the vehicle may return home to the workshop in Trebur, Germany.
