Dubai: Emirati driver Ahmad Al Maqoodi is in the hunt for a double title success in the UAE Desert Championship, but the pressure is building in the new national rally series.

At the half-way point in the inaugural 2013-14 season, Al Maqoodi leads both the cars overall category and the buggies division in his Polaris RZR XP, while fellow Emirati Mohammad Shamsi shares the lead in the quads class.

Al Maqoodi had to be content with second place in the cars and buggies classes in round two at the weekend as a powerful line-up of 88 competitors on four and two wheels fought out the two-hour Baja-style short-track rally run near Al Lusayli.

Victory in both classes went to another Emirati, Khalid Al Jafla in a Polaris 2012 XP. He had a winning margin of 1 min, 44.309 seconds over six laps of the 20km desert route.

Ahmad Al Fahim in a Polaris RZ finished third, while fourth place in his Nissan Patrol gave Mansoor Al Helei the overall lead in the T2 category and lifted him to second place in the overall car standings.

In the fiercely contested bikes category, Ross Runnalls was fastest on the day on his Kawasaki KXF450, winning by 3 mins, 17.482 secs from Sean Gaugain, whose second place was still enough to give him the overall lead at the half-way stage in the new UAE Desert Championship.

Third fastest on the day on his Honda CR250R put Mark Grams in second place in the standings, while Sam Sunderland, who went agonisingly close to a brilliant win in this year’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, will be looking for a big second half of the season.

After missing last month’s opening round, Sunderland held the lead at the end of the first lap, but dropped out of contention when he ran out of fuel, eventually finishing fifth to lie just outside the top ten overall.

Riding a Kawasaki 450, Shamsi took victory in the quads division by a fraction of a second from first-round winner Sebastian Husseini on a Honda TRX700 to move level with him in the overall standings.

Organised by the Emirates Motor Sport Federation, with TAG Heuer Middle East as the official timekeeper and founding partner, the UAE Desert Championship is run with the support of the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE, the national motorsport authority.

“The championship has made a very solid start, and we’re expecting many more entries in all categories in the future,” said ATCUAE President, Mohammad Ben Sulayem.

The two remaining rounds of the series, which provides a natural link into next April’s latest edition of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, are scheduled for January 31 and February 14-15 and will take place in other emirates.