Dakar Update: Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi

January 08, 2021:  The UAE’s Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi and new German co-driver Dirk Von Zitzewitz continued to make up for the huge amount of ground they lost through a broken gearbox on the first leg.

Al Qassimi produced the 24th fastest time on the stage in his ageing, two-wheel drive Abu Dhabi Racing Peugeot 3008 DKR to reach the half-way point in 51st place, and is determined to keep climbing the rankings.

“We had a few technical issues,” he said. “It's just navigation as I'm trying to get used to my co-driver. I was just chatting with (Sebastien) Loeb who got lost today. For me it was kind of fine, but I was driving behind a car for 170 kilometers. After the liaison I decided to push more and passed a couple of cars. Then I had a flat tyre so again I had to stop and change it. We will be preparing the car and are trying to give it the maximum we can. But we have the old generation and many parts are going not really the way we want. But there's one week to go and we’ll see what we're going to do.”