Ford's 2012 race around the GCC

In an effort to help out local adventurer, Nabil El Busaidy (aka Nabs), I thought I'd share in his latest endeavor, which is representing Oman in the first ever Ford 2012 GCC race around the place. It is a 7 city dash, running from Riyadh on Wednesday 25th April - Kuwait - Manama - Doha - Abu Dhabi - Muscat - Dubai finishing on Thursday May 3rd. They are in Muscat on Wednesday 2nd May.

Focus Rabaa (which apparently means 'a gang of friends') sets the ground for a fun challenge and a test for driving skills, endurance, and the use of the all-new 2012 Ford Focus technologies, as participants drive across all of the Gulf countries to complete a series of tasks and challenges. Teams will be rated on their skills and performances rather than speed, as well as the level of participation and support of their fans.

The competition calls for six teams – one each from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – to represent their country. Each team will be headed by their respective national captains, who are a group of celebrities from the entertainment and sports world in the GCC, and manned by three drivers who will show their skills in driving, road handling and sheer mental power as they compete against each other in a series of challenges along the way. 

Nabs was the selected celebrity for Oman and is looking for a team of 3 drivers to complete the rally - the winners all get a brand new Ford Focus 2012 model car free, which isn't too shabby. Anyway, to have a shot at being the driving team, you and 2 friends (that's 3 in total..... no more and no less) basically take a 2 minute video of yourselves and send it up to Youtube and fill in the online application form. I did look for this application form but haven't found it, applications may be closed now anyway. Oh and you have to be able to swim.

Due to the fact that the route takes you through the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and their visa restrictions there, you gotta be a GCC citizen to enter, and more specifically for the Oman team, you obviously have to be Oman to represent. But anyone can be a part of the Pit Crew (and the best pit crew member for the winning team gets to win a car as well) - more on that when information is made available.

There are some things we can all do to show support though, firstly which is getting the Oman page a respectable number of "likes" on the book of faces. Oman's 2012 Raba'a page can be reached by clicking here. For those of you that like to do the twitter thing, there is this hashtag: #FocusRabaa

Currently there are a paltry 52 Facebook likes for the Oman page, lets see if we can get that number up a bit, at least in front of the UAE page, which has 58 likes right now! However, the runaway leader at the moment is the KSA page with 136 likes.

More updates on this as it happens.

le fin.