If the downturn had not cast a large shadow over the NewYear already, there was the bloodshed in Gaza. Yet this is the year where Israeli Aric Lapter and Palestinian Rasheed Nashashibi, united by their love of racing, hope to demonstrate that Israelis and Palestinians have a future. Not of hate and war, but of co-operation.
Their team is called Racing 4 Peace and they aim to compete in the British Formula Vee Championship in the first car built in Israel. Like Formula Ford, Formula Vee in Britain celebrated 40 years in 2007 and is renowned for being a low-cost and entertaining form of racing.
In spite of the difficulties posed by the unresolved conflict with Israel, Palestine is following the trend in the Middle East with its newfound love affair of motor racing. “There’s actually a Palestine Motorsport Federation,” says Nashashibi. “Surprisingly, it has FIA approval and even joined the FIA before Israel did and can issue licences.”After gaining his race licence by passing the ARDS test at Silverstone in 2007, Nashashibi found himself testing Lapter’s car. “I was really impressed that someone had done the whole thing according to the British regulations,” he says.
In the absence of circuits in Israel, the testing has been done at the Arad airstrip in the Negev desert. Sponsorship has been a problem due to the current economic downturn. The target was US$100,000 to cover the cost of transporting the car to the UK. So far just $2,000 has been raised, which has hampered further development of the car. Consequently, the Racing 4 Peace team is considering using the money raised to hold a further test at Silverstone or another race track. Another option is to race for two weekends in one of GAC’s cars.
“We are still optimistic,” says Lapter, “and hope to find sponsors.” Achieving that would be helped by the documentary film about the project currently being made by Israeli director Omer Reiss. “The BBC may be sponsoring the film and it will make things easier to find sponsors. They might even sponsor us for two weekends of racing,” says Lapter.
“The project of Racing 4 Peace is the idea of bringing together two things Israel doesn’t have – peace and racing.” In the current circumstances, as a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict still appears far away, he and Nashashibi could not be needed more.
To discover more about this inspiring project, please visit www.racing4peace.com
Alternatively, contact Aric (aric@racing4peace.com) or Rasheed (rasheed@racing4peace.com) directly.
Please click here to read the full article.
