Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah was crowned ninth in the Silk Road Rally, which ended Tuesday after participants cut 5,000 kilometers to the Dakar Rally, which was crowned this year for the third time in his career.
After passing through the Siberian forests through the Mongolian plains to the giant sand dunes of the Gobi Desert, the participants arrived Tuesday at Donhang, including the Toyota Gazu Racing Overdrive and his French navigator Matteo Pommel, achieving his first win in the two-row rally in 2010. Behind Carlos Sainz, and 2018 behind his current Saudi Toyota teammate Yazid Al Rajhi.
Al-Attiyah took advantage of Al-Rajhi's withdrawal from the second stage of the 10th, including the Rally, in order to impose his full control as he finished first in all stages, finishing ninth in the lead against Chinese Wai Han and Frenchman Jerome Béliche.
"It was very important to me, because it is a great and very beautiful race," he said.
"I am very happy to finally be able to win the Silk Road Rally, having finished second in the past," he said. "We have made three completely different countries (Russia, Mongolia and China) with very different stages and quality of tracks."
The ninth version of the rally began in Irkutsk in Siberia on July 6 and ended ten days and five thousand kilometers in the Chinese desert of Gobi in Dunhuang, the famous site of Cahoe, decorated with ancient statues and murals.