Success in the desert for rally car manufacturer from Banbury

The Bahrain Raid Xtreme team combines the engineering expertise of Prodrive with the funding of Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund, the Mumtalakat Holding Company, to create the Bahrain Raid Xtreme Prodrive Hunter, a vehicle that was created to cross any terrain at high speed.

Drivers Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin took the Prodrive Hunter to victory at stage four of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, one of the hardest desert rallies in the world.

As the first car off the start line, the pair opened the road of what was to be 308 kilometers, but early morning fog delayed the start of the stage by two hours, necessitating organisers to cut the length of the test to 173 kilometres for safety reasons.

With temperatures reaching the high 30s, the pair still managed to maintain their lead all the way to the finish for those valuable championship points.

Driver Sébastien Loeb said: "It’s great to be winning again and on top of the results, so thank you to the team for the hard work they’ve done. It wasn’t an easy stage to read as there were some broken dunes and you had to be extra careful as you couldn’t see where they were. We could’ve been in sixth gear in many more places than we were, no problem, but we had to be very careful.

"We had one landing that was a big hit so it proved you can get caught, but the car took it and we’re back at the bivouac all together."