Wearing a helmet and strapped securely into his four-wheel-drive, Abdelilah Al Rabea tore off across the Saudi desert, kicking up clouds of sand as a crowd of hundreds cheered him on.
Every year through the end of April, droves of people flock to Zulfi, more than 200 kilometres northwest of Riyadh, where adrenaline-seeking motorists drive superpowered cars across steep dunes.
Dune bashing, or tatees in Arabic, is an adventure sport that involves driving off-road across challenging desert landscapes, and has long been a popular pastime in the oil-rich kingdom.
"This is a popular sport in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf because we have these dunes," Al Rabea said.
It requires "considerable effort", he added, but the payoff is "a real rush of adrenaline".
Abdallah Al Amar, who came to watch the show with his son, said spectators were willing to "travel great distances" for the meets, flocking from all over the country to watch the drivers perform their stunts.
In Zulfi, hundreds of cars and pick-up trucks dotted the sands as far as the eye can see, while nearby a motorist raced up a 100-metre-tall dune.
"The cars you see here are specially equipped" for the challenge, Al Rabea told AFP.
"We wait for this moment all year. We optimise the engine, the car, every single detail."
For many, dune bashing and desert drifting is a passion that began in adolescence.
Badr Al Ghamas, a 33-year-old man from Al Qassim, began practising the sport when he was only 15 years old.
"For some, sports means to play football or swimming. For us, it's going dune bashing," he said with a smile.
Sole survivors
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- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
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- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
