In these pages recently, The National's sports columnist, Ali Khaled, addressed a central question.
What is it, he asked just before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, about speed that can be so intrinsic to Emiratis?
Khaled had begun with an evocative image of the old Arabian knight: "White headdress flailing in the wind, the fearless horseman tears through the desert dunes beneath a scorching sun."
And it is something of this image that Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi draws from in trying to explain why he loves rally driving.
"I'll tell you something. We by nature, we love the thrill. Even our old grandfathers and forefathers, they are Bedouin and brought up in this part of the world in desert, the challenge with mother nature, the heat, the dust.
"But there was also the thrill of competition. Each tribe had its camels and there was kind of a challenge in that. That has carried into modern life where we have now switched to machines."
Sheikh Khalid, the UAE's foremost rally driver, is back after a year out with injury. This weekend, the National Day weekend no less, he will take part in the Dubai International Rally, traditionally the final leg of the Middle Eastern Rally Championship (Merc). He is not nervous, but he has a strange, explosive history at the event.
Looking forward to a new partnership in WRC
To the average man, there is Formula One and then there is everything else in motorsport. Rally driving is far less sanitised than F1, or any kind of circuit driving. As Sheikh Khalid says it, he got into rally cars only because the karting circuit had become, well, a little meek for him.
"It wasn't anything special," he said. "Before all this I was doing circuit racing, not proper, but a lot of karting. And I got a little bit bored with karting. I wanted to see if there is more thrill in rallying and the moment I jumped in a rally car I knew I wasn't going to be driving around a circuit anymore. It's more thrilling in rally cars than whatever we see. I think the effort you put into rally driving is more than circuit driving."
It is true that rally driving is a wilder, lesser controlled pursuit, or at least it appears that way. It is more prone to the vagaries of human skill and behaviour - and nature itself - than F1, where the long-held truth appears to be that technology and machine has made man not redundant, but secondary.
"In F1 the best car will win and maybe the challenge is different because you have only certain corners where you can overtake," he said. "In rallying, it is different. You are in the mountains, the snow, the desert, in the mud, in the forests, every terrain is a challenge and you just drive through it. It's not a loop, it's lots of kilometres and every 150 to 200 metres there is a different challenge, a different surprise and you need fast reactions and decision-making for that."
This past year, for the first time in nearly a decade, Sheikh Khalid took a break, a break for "reevaluation". The five-year contract for Abu Dhabi Racing - of which he is chairman - with Ford was coming to an end. He needed to tend to some repair work on his own body, general wear and tear from years of driving on what can be a gruelling global circuit.
A break for surgery allowed him to work out the details of a new five-year contract with Citroen and now refreshed, he will be back in the World Rally Championship (WRC) next season, from January at the Monte Carlo Rally, as well as Merc. He is excited about the deal with Citroen though does not want to talk too much about it until the official launch next week.
For now he is concentrating only on the weekend 12-stage rally, at the wheel of a new Ford Fiesta 1.6 Turbo and partnered for the first time by his experienced British co-driver Scott Martin.
Chequered record in Dubai
So, the history at the Dubai Rally. In any case, even before accounting for this, a year's lay-off will not make matters easier and neither will the presence of the Qatari Nasser Al Attiyah, the Merc leader, the winner of the last five Dubai Rallies and a seven-time winner.
Sheikh Khalid has won it twice, in 2005 and 2006, but it has either been glory or disaster and nothing in between. "In 2010 when I last did the rally, I was leading for the first six stages before the engine blew. In 2003 I had a very big accident during it and even in 2005 I had a massive problem with the car as it wasn't really running properly. So I've had good and bad times, 50-50, either good, or completely disastrous."
He sounds relaxed enough about it and though he stresses how important it is to do well this weekend, he is also a man acknowledging a bigger picture beyond it. There is the new partnership and the WRC, but there is also the task, in his capacity as ADR chairman, of unearthing more drivers, of squeezing the natural affinity for speed.
Local rallies across the Emirates, he feels, need to be revived for this and says that something of the kind is in the works in the near future. Otherwise, expecting more young drivers to emerge is "like asking me to make a football team to go and play in the World Cup, but if I don't have an Al Ain or Al Jazira, then how can I do it?"
An Emirati triumph over this most Emirati weekend will do for now. "I'm going in with a relaxed mind. I'll do my best to win, of course, because this is part of what we do, we want to go for glory, to win, but things can happen. Inshallah, it will be great to have a clean run and win this, as a gift to our country for National Day and the President and especially for Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed [Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces], who is a big supporter for us and motorsport. It would be really good to show what we can do."
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
Five%20calorie-packed%20Ramadan%20drinks
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
The Perfect Couple
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor
Creator: Jenna Lamia
Rating: 3/5
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
WHAT IS GRAPHENE?
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
'Avengers: Infinity War'
Dir: The Russo Brothers
Starring: Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Robert Downey Junior, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen
Four stars
Sunday's fixtures
- Bournemouth v Southampton, 5.30pm
- Manchester City v West Ham United, 8pm
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Spider-Man%202
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ASSASSIN'S%20CREED%20MIRAGE
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The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
Representing%20UAE%20overseas
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RACECARD
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Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
KLOPP%20AT%20LIVERPOOL
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