Al-Attiyah to focus on testing in Argentina

Nasser Al-Attiyah plans to spend the final leg of Rally Argentina fine-tuning the settings of his Škoda Fabia S2000 ahead of his next event following a frustrating start to his Intercontinental Rally Challenge career in South America yesterday.

The Qatari had high hopes of a strong result on the gravel event but lost time in the morning running first on the road in a car which wasn’t handling as he would have liked.

He then picked up two punctures on stage six and had to adopt a cautious approach for the remaining brace of stages of leg one due to the fact he had no spare tyres left and couldn’t risk another puncture.

He said: “It was a really bad day yesterday so all we can do now is get to the finish and try many things on the car for our next rally.”

Al-Attiyah and Italian co-driver Giovanni Bernacchini are currently 13th overall.