Nasser Al Attiyah is Triple FIA Champion
37 year old Nasser Al Attiyah from Qatar clinched his third FIA title of the season when he won the Troodos Rally in Cyprus, thereby gaining the Middle East Rally Championship. Earlier in the season he had taken the FIA Cup for Cross Country Bajas and later the FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rallies. The Pirelli Star Driver nomination from the MERC region however was left undecided, to be settled in one month's time in Dubai, with the Lebanese driver Nick Georgiou running the strong favourite.

The Cyprus event was held in the far western side of the Island, based at Geroskipou, a resort near Paphos. A driver determined to challenge Al Attiyah for victory on this event was another Lebanese, Roger Feghali. He had been Al Attiyah's unexpected adversary on the preceding rounds in Jordan. On the first stage of 38km, the Qatari was only 2.2 seconds in front of Feghali. On stage three Nasser spun and held a slender one second lead at the midday service halt. On the second run through the stages Al Attiyah started suffering overheating and the engine regularly cut out. On stage four he lost a minute, letting Feghali edge into the lead, but then on the final stage of the day Feghali retired after he hit a rock and broke a driveshaft. Al Attiyah then went to the overnight parc ferme over three minutes ahead of the opposition, which he held to the end of the event..

Al Attiyah's closest championship title rival was in fact Nick Georgiou. With the chance of beating Nasser for the MERC title very slim, Nick drove cautiously and gained valuable points instead for the Star Driver series. Nick now only has to finish the final round in Dubai to claim the fifth and final seat in the Star Drivers line up for 2009, whatever his rival Nicos Thomas can do.

Nasser is one of motorsport's most amazing champions. He is an all embracing sportsman, not only in a variety of rally sport disciplines but also as an Olympic standard skeet shooting champion. He started rallysport in 1989, had a break of eight years before returning to win the MERC series for the first of five times. In 2006 he was FIA's Production Car World Rally Champion. Since then the majority of his active life is in the deserts of the cross country world, but the combination of that and orthodox rallying has been almost perfect.






FIA’s new seat generation
Quite the most worrying safety aspect in rallying are the side impact accidents, especially those in which the car hits a tree or a telegraph pole. This year the FIA Institute's Closed Car Research Group has been developing the Advanced Side Impact System, the prototype of which was first demonstrated at the Neste Oil Rally Finland last year. At the beginning of the 2008 season, teams were required to install safety foam at a level with the driver's helmet and the side of the car, also NASCAR-type cages fitted between driver and codriver. At Rally Japan the next step was introduced, the special seat.

The new specification seat is designed to be an integral part of this side impact safety project. It also features improved strength and support during rear impacts, and maximises pelvis, shoulder and head protection during side impacts by spreading the load evenly through the occupant's
body. The seat brackets and belt positions have been specified to create optimised belt strap geometry and angles which ensure the torso is efficiently and equally restrained by each of the straps of the safety harness. A high-g sled test, together with full-scale vehicle testing, has demonstrated that a high velocity 100g side impact could be survived without serious injury.
Sparco has initially produced 25 examples to be shared round the teams. Third priority in this project will be a 200mm thick impact dispersing system to be placed in the space between the door and the seat.

3mmm
photo 1: Al Attiyah Subaru Impreza N 14 in action
photo 2: Al Attiyah/ Patterson at finish
photo 3: Nick Georgiou
photo 4: New Sparco seat
photo 5: New Sparco seat