Badawi Trail to the Last Oasis 2026, Syd Stelvio Day 10 – Hail to Madinah – 558km
Today the rally headed back to the holy city of Madinah, with a packed morning that included no less than 3 competitive sections wedged into 180km, with only a small amount of time between each to contemplate any mistakes, that at this stage of the game could be crucial. Thankfully the drive out of the city of Hail was less eventful than the previous evenings drive in, that was something akin to wacky races, as the rally cars were jostled about the road by the evening traffic. Hail seemed to have more roundabouts than Milton Keynes, and lane discipline is a mere serving suggestion. Indeed, the evening commuters seemed to only hold an ambition to use as many lanes as they could, inventing their own lanes for extra points.
The morning saw largely empty roads though, and eventually highway gave way to single carriageway roads that soon gave way to sand and dirt tracks for the mornings opening STC. This took place on a plateau in the foothills below Jibal Hudayban, in a landscape covered in grass tufts. Amongst these there were a myriad of tracks to follow, offering plenty of nefarious choices to tempt navigators and drivers onto the incorrect path, and away from the route.
There were worse traps waiting for the unwary though, with a multitude of wadis to slow down for, which for some reason were harder to spot today than on previous occasions, and often appeared in places where a wadi had no business being. One in particular was catching out the crews, even though it was marked in the road book, a particularly vicious wadi that was masked by the shadow of the trees it lay between. There were plenty of examples of last-minute braking, and front wheels lifting skyward, but one crew, who’s number I shall not publish as they are in a hire car (let’s just call them the Danes of Hazard) decided that braking wasn’t for them at all, and had clearly taken inspiration from the recent Artemis launch. Some say the car in question is still in orbit somewhere, and that air traffic control had them appear on their systems, or perhaps they were just attempting to prove that hire cars really are the fastest cars in the world. Whatever the reason, it was impressive.
There were no major dramas across the STC for those competing at the sharp end, despite more than a few of them driving off course at times. It had certainly been a challenging 21km offroad though, so the prospect of the first regularity for a few days and life at a slower pace was no doubt attractive as the cars made their way across country for the days reg. There were some good performances across the section, with a lot of single figure scores, even for those not vying for the top spots including Michael Busch and Christian Riethmuller who came agonisingly close to a zero with 1 second of penalty in their Peugeot 504. Three cars did manage a perfect run to the timing point, with zeroes for Land Cruiser crew Yang Zhan and Jason Zhe Ren and the other Peugeot 504 of Michael and Jakob Haentjes, who were putting their past mechanical troubles behind them, although I’m pretty sure they shredded a tyre at some point today, just for old time’s sake.
The final STC of the day was in another area of desert scrub, with a fairly simple loop around one of the granite hills that pop up erratically throughout the desert. Despite the loop being far less complicated than the mornings TC section, it seemed to be causing more problems for the crews, with several taking wrong tracks both at the start and close to the end, including Peter and Debbie Fitzcharles, attempting to chase down that first place. Their error cost them 30 seconds of penalty, as well as a later than planned return to base as they bent the steering arm of the Fangio. Of course, where crews are in trouble, others will help, and in this instance Kurt Deklerck and Patrick Debusseré, and Yang Zhan and Jason Zhe Ren both stopped to help with the repair – or at least help with getting the car jacked up and ready for the Sweeps arrival. Eventually the arm was straightened with nothing more complicated than a ratchet strap and the orange Chevy was on the road again, after another fantastic example of the camaraderie amongst the group.
All that remained was to spend the next few hours driving into Madinah, after a fun morning’s competition, on roads that ran through landscape not unlike Mongolia, albeit with a different climate, and of course on tarmac! With most crews pretty much matching each other, nothing has really changed in the leaderboard as the rally accelerates towards its twilight. Best on the day though were Yang and Jason in the Toyota Land Cruiser, the only car to achieve zero penalties across the leg.
We head to Jeddah tomorrow, after which there will only be a couple of days left. After the road had seemingly stretched out forever, tomorrow we will be back where it all started and closing in on the finish. But there is still a bit of rallying to be done before then…
Syd.