Nasser Al Attiyah, wins the title of World Rally-Raid Champion
- The Qatari driver will go down in history as the first ever FIA Rally-Raid champion
- Nasser achieves the most prestigious double of 2022 with victory in the Dakar and the W2RC World Championship title
Nasser Al Attiyah now has the latest grand prize to crown him as the king of motorsport, as the FIA awarded him the W2RC World Champion trophy on 9 December. After a hard-fought battle with Sébastien Loeb, which has left a hole in history, the Qatari was proclaimed champion of one of the most demanding motorsport disciplines.
Al Attiyah arrived at one of his best moments,having been crowned Dakar champion twice, Nasser goes down in history as the first ever FIA Rally-Raid World Champion.
The Federation decided to give a radical change to the competition by classifying it as a world championship, thus allowing both FIA cars and FIM motorbikes to be grouped into a single competition: Word Rally-Raid Championship, making it one of the most demanding competitions in the automotive world.
Nasser passed all four rounds of the competition with flying colours, overcoming all kinds of obstacles in the Dakar, Abu Dhabi, Morocco and Andalusia. Al Attiyah, who finished on the podium three times, a task that was not made easy by his main rival Loeb, who was on his heels at all times, Nasser Al Attiyah was crowned champion with 169 points.
The Rally-Raid, a teamwork
The victory for the driver and his Toyota GR DKR Hilux is shared by co-driver Mathieu Baumel and manufacturer Toyota Gazoo Racing, also awarded by the FIA as co-driver and team winners of the 2022 World Rally-Raid Championship.
For the driver, this new award becomes his fourth, joining the 2006 PWRC (Production World Rally Championship) and the 2014 and 2015 WRC-2 (World Rally Championship 2) double. He also has 18 titles in the MERC (Middle East Rally Championship), eight of which he shares with his co-driver, Mathieu Baumel.
Al Attiyah, Baumel and Toyota Gazoo Racing’s world championship title celebrations will be short-lived as the 2023 W2RC kicks off on 31 December with the first round of the championship at the 45th edition of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. Nasser is already preparing for his debut, aiming to win the first of the WR2C events and get the season off to a good start.