Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, advisor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who is also the Governor of Makkah region patronized Friday the closing ceremony of the 3rd edition of "Saudi Arabia Dakar Rally 2022", which was held at Jeddah Corniche Circuit in January 2022. During the rally, the contestants finished 12 stages hosted by a number of governorates, cities and regions across the Kingdom. Prince Khaled also witnessed the coronation ceremony of the winners of the race in its six categories: cars, motorcycles, quad bikes, trucks and light desert vehicles, in addition to Dakar Classic category. Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Al-Abdullah Al-Faisal, chairman of Saudi Automobile & Motorcycle Federation (SAMF) and head of Saudi Motorsport Co. (SMC), and Deputy Minister of Sports Badr Bin Abdurrahman Al-Qadi too attended after the end of the 12th stage of the race that started from Bisha governorate to Jeddah governorate, and covered a total distance of 680 km, including 164 km for the special stage subject to timing. At the closing of this stage, Qatari rally driver, Nasser Al-Attiyah of Toyota team won first place in the car category, surpassing the Frenchman Sebastien Loeb, the driver of the "BRX" team, who finished second, while Saudi Yazeed Al-Rajhi of "Over Drive" team, scored a historic accomplishment by achieving third place to become the first Saudi to climb the podium in Dakar Rally since its inception 44 years ago. In the motorcycle category, British Sam Sunderland biker of GasGas team won the title, while Honda Team's Chilean biker Pablo Quintanilla came second and Austrian Matthias Walkner biker of Red Bull KTM team took third place. The Frenchman Alexandre Giroud of the Yamaha team's quad rally driver won the title of the current edition of the rally in the quad category, twenty-five years after his father achieved the title in 1997, while Argentinian Francisco Moreno, the quad rally driver of "Drag On" team snatched second place and the Polish Kamil Wisniewski, the quad rally driver of "Orlin" team grabbed third place. In the trucks category, the KAMAZ- Master crew monopolized the first three places in Saudi Arabia Dakar Rally 2022, as the Russian rally driver Dmitry Sotnikov won the first place and his colleague Eduard Nikolaev came second, followed by Anton Shibalov in third place. Chilean driver Francisco Lopez Contardo won the T3 light desert vehicle category, beating Swedish Sebastian Eriksson to second, while Spain's Christian Gutierrez came in third. The Saudi female racer Dania Akeel ranked 8th in the general classification, while her Saudi colleague Mashael AlObaidan ranked 17th in their first debut in Dakar Rally. In the light desert T4 category, the American racer Austin Jones won the title, after a strong competition with Spaniard Gerard Varese who finished second, while Lithuanian driver Rokas Paciuska came third for the standings. --SPA
