The Motosport Italia Iveco Trakker A190TW was right on the truck pace on the Pharaons International Cross Country Rally in Egypt as the Italian team prepares for another assault on the Dakar Rally. The #301 Motorsport Iveco Trakker A190TW was crewed by Giacomo Vismara, Mario Cambiaghi and Matteo Curti on the Pharaons Rally in Egypt. While the 104 bike competitors set a new record, the truck category was quite small, with four entries, but several other Italian crews would provide a tough test for the clear favourites, the Motorsport Iveco Trakker A190TW.

The Motosport Italia team's Iveco Trakker A190TW was right on the truck pace on the Pharaons International Cross Country Rally in Egypt last month as the Italian outfit prepares for another assault on the biggest 'Raid' of them all, the Dakar Rally, next January.

The Pharaons International Cross Country Rally, organised as usual by the FIA Automobile and Touring Club of Egypt, was held earlier last month; it is regarded as second only to the Lisboa-Dakar in the annual Rally-Raid calendar and a record bike entry plus a strong car entry was seen for this year's edition. With the Dakar adventure still over two months away, the rally is a perfect 'test' session for many teams and the event was last year nicknamed the 'half Dakar' last year to due to its route length being almost exactly half that of the Dakar adventure.

Starting from Cairo and immediately heading towards the south-west, in the direction of the oasis of the Egyptian-Libyan desert, the competitions would find the ground of this year's Pharaons Rally comparatively hard, sometime stony, and with varied and repeated undulations, that superbly reproduce the conditions of some of the initial stages of the Dakar. During the next stages towards the west, in the direction of the mythical Siwa oasis, and heading into one of the best deserts of the world, the ground would become more sandy. Ground that is fluent and fast, sometimes undulated, with some dune crossing, and above all hors piste, and with much of the distance being by navigation where it’s necessary to drive “at sight”.

In the three middle stages of the rally the crews would see the greatest quantity of sand and dunes of any other rally: more then 80 percent sand and around 65 percent dunes and all this in 84 percent of hors piste. Besides the challenge of the sand and dunes, the competitors faced crossing the “Egyptian-Libyan desert”, a desert with sand and dunes that are very similar to the ones found in Mauritania on the Dakar Rally.

130 teams arrived in the Egyptian capital city, close to the famous pyramids of Giza, to take part to the 10th edition of the Total Pharaons International Cross Country Rally. While the 104 bike competitors set a new entry record, the truck category was quite small, with four teams, but several other strong Italian crews would provide a tough test for the clear favourites, the #301 Motorsport Iveco Trakker A190TW crewed by Giacomo Vismara, Mario Cambiaghi and Matteo Curti. The biggest challenge would come from the 'wild card' attack posed by the #302 Vismara Motorsport DAF AV75PC (Claudio Bellina, Paolo Bellini, Minelli Giulio), while two Mercedes-Benz Unimog trucks: the #303 Mescaleros Tribù A.S.D. (Lucio Pezzotta, Mario Mutti) and the #304 Paccani Macchine Spa (Matteo Paccani, Attilio Brevi), would complete the T4 category's entry list.

The Motorsport Italia team were immediately in impressive form as the rally left Cairo at speed, comfortably winning the truck category (T4) on the 316.04 km long first stage which took the competitors from the capital to Baharija, the Iveco team finishing more than half an hour ahead of their closest rival and in an impressive 7th place overall when combining the 4 trucks with the 20 cars, which included Nissan and Mitsubishi runners, along with the more specialist Bowler and Buggy machines. The Iveco crew also won the very fast 321.43 km long second stage which took the rally south westwards to Sitra Road, finishing an impressive 5th overall (cars and trucks combined) to extend their advantage in T4 to 48 minutes and 57 seconds.

Fastest time in T4 on the rock-strewn 336.68 km third stage allowed the second placed overall Paccani Macchine Unimog to claw some ground back, but the Motorsport Italia team still held a very comfortable 25 minutes 35 second advantage at the top of the T4 category. However, on the fourth of the seven stages, a 347.61 km loop completely off-track that featured everything from huge dunes and sandy valleys to rugged mountains, and which saw the remaining teams start and finish in the oasis of Siwa, the Motorsports Italian team retired with engine problems, however not before they had clearly demonstrated their front-running pace.