For the first time in the history of the World Rally Championship, crews will travel to the Middle East this week for the fifth event of the season.
The debutant Jordan Rally is set to be a gruelling challenge of hard-base sandy roads that sprawl through the region's desert plains from the rally base alongside the Dead Sea.
Located just below the northern Jordan city of Amman, Rally HQ and the service park promise a spectacular welcome for the crews. Based on the banks of the Dead Sea, it is the lowest point on earth at 408 metres below sea level. Most of the rally is run below sea level, making for a stark contrast to the altitude of the last two events in Mexico and Argentina.
The roads that wind through the Jordan Valley reach as low as 400 metres below sea level, and the only altitude section in the Rumman forests rises to just over 1000 metres, past the biblical site of Mount Nebo.
The rally comprises 21 stages and 351 competitive kilometres of hard-packed sandy roads on which crews will use Pirelli's hard compound Scorpion gravel tyre.
Special notes:
The normally loose surface has been bonded and hard-packed over the last two years to create the rally's stage route and provide crews with a very hard surface on which to compete.
Whilst the first few cars to run will inevitably experience a loose covering of sand, surface deterioration shouldn't be an issue, even as temperatures reach towards 40 degrees Celsius.
It does mean however that if crews run off line the surface will be far looser and grip reduced significantly. Whilst there is a lot of run-off in the barren desert landscape, which may give crews the confidence to push harder in the knowledge there is more chance that mistakes will go relatively unpunished, off-road excursions may still prove costly with soft sand and interspersed rocky outcrops.
The stages offer their own unique challenges in accurately judging distances and defining the roads amid the vast expanse of desert.
FIA World Rally Championship news:
Sebastien Loeb re-took the lead in the race for the 2008 FIA World Rally drivers' championship following his victory on the Rally Argentina at the end of last month.
