Motorheads overcome natural, political obstacles at Gouna Rally Special

The off-road rally race held in El Gouna April 15-16 left the town roaring and buzzing with engines and spectators. It wasn’t your regular motor sport race but a weekend extravaganza.

The weekend kicked off with a parade of Global Biking Initiative cyclists who had biked all the way from Cairo to the Read Sea resort town, followed by a parade of motor-bikers and finally the rally cars. That Friday morning, Abu Tig Marina was flooded with a sea of family, friends and rally lovers, all cheering and parading their teams. I couldn't help but fall in love with the vibrant, family-friendly atmosphere. Adults and children alike were jittery in excitement.

The annual Gouna Rally Special is organized by the rally giants Bosla Company and the founders of the Egypt Rally School, which is based at the Automobile and Touring Club in downtown Cairo and offers rally driving lessons and certification. Many of this year’s racers were alumni of the school. Founded in 2010, the Gouna Rally is currently the only national rally tournament in Egypt, though there are plans for another national race this September in Sahel.

This year, 10 rally car teams and 10 motorbike teams entered the race, most of them Cairo-based. With no age restrictions, you have racers as young as 24 and as old as 65, with motor-bikers tending to be even younger than the car drivers. Rally racers are split in two categories depending on their years of racing experience: those with more than two years’ experience are classified as professional, while rookies have fewer than two years under their belt. The overall results of the weekend left reigning champions Rahhala once again with the winning title.

The race was comprised of two stages that take place over two days. The first was a closed, 5-km off-road rally track within El Gouna itself, which took five laps to complete. The second, 160-km race took place Saturday in Wadi Belli in the Eastern Desert — although right up to the night before, there were backup plans to hold the second stage in El Gouna if the military didn’t grant racers access to the desert.

You didn’t have to be a motor sport enthusiast to enjoy Friday’s race. Picnic umbrellas, beanbags and chairs lined the track, while music played in the background. Food and drink stands were scattered around, and people milled around with their pets, kids and friends. And then, for a couple of those hours, you got to see motorbikes, quads and cars showing off their engine power and moves in the desert. By the end of the race, we were all covered in sand and dust, but that made us feel all the more a part of it.

The second stage was not observable by spectators, but racers said it was significantly more difficult than previous years. Only a few rally car teams finished both laps of the second stage, and many more strayed off-course — sometimes just by 20 km, other times by as much as 200 km. Some frustrated racers said that there should have been some consideration for the fact that seven of the copilots this year were first-time copilots, especially given that the Eastern Desert is one of the hardest terrains to navigate in the world. Copilots are key for navigation — they decipher the road book, a book of code and symbols only comprehensible to rally racers, to guide their route in a setting where GPS is not of much use. This year’s road book was said to have been unusually tricky, particularly for the beginning of the race, where obstacles like dunes and mountains were very difficult to overcome — and if you were unable to pass the first obstacle, you were bound to stray off-course.

Travelling with Garage, one of the up-and-coming off-road rally teams in Egypt, I was able to experience the race not only as a spectator, but as a team member. A rally team has no restrictions on the number of members, so long as there is a pilot and copilot. Other members include the team manager, team coordinator, mechanics, photographer and social media representative. Throughout the weekend, the essence of teamwork was continuously emphasized, with the team members often telling each other, “A racer can never win a race, only a team can.” And just like a marathon, a cross-country rally is not about winning but perseverance. As copilot of the Garage rally team Yassir al-Gohary put it, “We are all champions if we finish the race.” And that I certainly saw: Even though everyone at the race was competing, they were comrades and friends above all. Their shared passion for this motor sport outweighed any competitive spirit.

Unfortunately, in recent years political turmoil in the region and subsequent difficulty in accessing the desert due to military restrictions has reduced the sport’s activity in Egypt. As a result, the internationally renowned Pharaons Rally, which started in 1982, was cancelled this year for the second time in the history of the tournament (the other occasion was 2013, due to political instability). Pharaons is the second-hardest off-road rally course in the world (after the Dakar Rally in South America), spanning a distance of about 3,100 km.  A large part of the Pharaons Rally runs through the Western Desert, which neighbors Libya, and after last year’s increased military restrictions on desert access due to ongoing instability and violence, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile ruled that Egypt was too unsafe to host the race. 

Furthermore, “the sport is a very expensive one and the little support by media, sponsors and lack of alternative resources leaves many unable to race, which is why many have opted instead to participate as part of other countries’ international teams,” explains Hakkam Rabee, who raced for a Qatari team in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge earlier this month before racing for the Pharoahs Rally Team at El Gouna.

“This is my passion,” he continues. “This is one of the things I’m living for.” For Hakkam and for many of these racers, despite all these obstacles not racing is simply not an option.

Even with reduced off-road rally activity in Egypt, there are now greater efforts to promote and support female racers in motorsports. Egypt now has its first all-female rally team, Gazelle, with other teams becoming more gender-balanced. It does remain a male-dominated sport, but you wouldn’t know it from the spectator crowds in El Gouna this year.

For many racers, like Garage Rally Team’s pilot Karim al-Galaly, who raced this year in the same Jeep Cherokee his father once raced, off-road rallying carries a great deal of memories. Many of these racers have been on these tracks from a very young age as they watched their fathers race, or watched the races together. For them, off-road rallying means the world. It means seeing places no one else does.

“Only divers and off-road rally drivers really see the beauty Egypt has to offer,” Karim says. ”I’ve seen parts of Egypt that only a handful of people have seen.”

All photos by Shahinda Abdalla. Correction: This article mistakenly informed readers that the Pharaohs Rally was established in 1986, that the race did end up taking place in 2013, and that it may be moved abroad in 2017. These errors were corrected on May 1 after communication with the rally's organizer, Mahmoud Noureldin.