We know it’s based in Jeddah and we know it’s taking us to the moon and back, but what’s this year’s inaugural World Rally Championship-qualifying Rally Saudi Arabia actually going to be like?
The lunar reference is, obviously, talking about the Moon Stage which runs twice on Thursday’s first full day of action – following a Wednesday evening superspecial in Jeddah. Jérôme Roussel knows the 200-mile route intimately and presents himself as the ideal tour guide to the November 26-29 event.
A route overview
“I think the biggest thing this route will bring is a completely new landscape for the WRC. The magic of WRC is to be on multiple terrains. And this will bring something new. If it would be another smooth gravel event in the forest, sometimes, honestly, when you watch TV, it’s hard for a rally on similar terrain to differentiate itself.
“This will be a rally which brings a route which, in terms of difficulty and roughness, is similar to Greece – but there’s real diversity in terms of stages. For example, we’re going through the mountains and there’s the Moon Stage. For me, this is something which doesn’t exist in the WRC now – it is a road which can become as iconic as Giulio Cesare and El Condor in Argentina. This is already going to bring something special to the championship.
“This route is not something new; Abdullah [Bakhashab, event director] has been working on this project for a long time. I remember him showing me a route, for the first time, on Google Maps in 2021. He has so much experience in WRC and so much enthusiasm for this route.
More on the mountains
“I think one thing we can be fairly sure for, is there will not be any snow! The mountains mark the start of the desert, it’s without a lot of vegetation and really arid. Coming from the mountains into the desert we will have some different aspects for the WRC. Instead of a completely defined road on the route, we will have a system of flags – a little bit like skiing where you have to go between the flags. I think we have seen this before, maybe in Jordan, but not for a while in the WRC.
Some parts of the route will feature way-marker flags that form gates like in alpine skiing
“This is one of the areas where the task force is working quite hard – we need to make sure the flags are all placed well. We need, for example, to be very clear which is the flag on the apex for the corner and this cannot change from the recce all the way through the rally and we will, of course, have marshals and volunteers in these places to be sure for this.
“For the desert roads, it will be hard tracks, it’s not like soft sand or dunes. But the backdrop will be the desert, and the combination of this and the mountains will be something new and incredible for the world of rallying.
Building the infrastructure
“One of the things we looked at first is whether to use the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, which is Saudi’s Formula 1 track. Understandably, it was interesting to use this, but it’s too small. If it was only the manufacturer teams coming then we could put them in the garages, but with the WRC2 teams coming there wouldn’t be enough space. It’s not really the same as European F1 tracks – for example there’s a large lagoon on the same site which takes up a lot of space.
“To be honest, I feel much more comfortable with the big square of Tarmac, which is what we have. With this, we can set things up, things like the service park, the superspecial [stage] and the fan zone, as we want – this is what we will be doing.
Toyota's Juho Hanninen took part in May Candidate event
“As well as building the service park, some of the roads and stages are also under construction. This demonstrates the commitment from SAMF (Saudi Automobile & Motorcycle Federation) and SMC (Saudi Motorsport Company). They have looked at where they want the rally to go and if the road isn’t there, they’re building it. It’s not all like this though, some of the roads already exist, but they need to improve it a little bit. In the mountains, the tracks have been there for centuries, but you couldn’t take a car over them – it’s these roads which are being worked on. I would say, maybe, 50% of the route will have had some construction work.
“Even on the roads which exist, we’re adding Armco in places to improve safety. The work undertaken is really massive and something which is unique in the WRC.”
The next step
“The process is going on all of the time to get everything ready for November. We have another event coming in October which will be a dress rehearsal of sorts. We will take some aspects of this event and run them to the WRC standard. I don’t want to say more on this yet, we are still finalizing which aspects we will focus on – but it’s sure we are there and we are going to make this happen. We know we have months of hard work ahead of us, but everybody around the table is committed to both this event and to the future with the Saudi Automobile & Motorcycle Federation.
“We must deliver, whatever it takes. Failing is not an option.”
