Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel captured his 11th Dakar Rally title on Saturday when he finished the 14th and final stage of this year’s event – a 346 km special from La Serena to Santiago, Chile.
Peterhansel and compatriot co-driver Jean Paul Cottret were the strong favourites this year as the defending champions, and being at head of the strong X-Raid Mini Team. The pair stayed out of trouble, were fortunate enough to only suffer a minimum of errors, and kept calm at the front of the car field to take the win after they held the lead for almost the entirety of this year’s raid, which passed through Peru and Argentina as well.
“The team did a cracking job. We never stopped. We never had a mechanical (problem). We only had to drive as fast as we could. On the other hand, my co-driver Jean-Paul did an amazing job navigating. We always maintained a high pace, apart from the last couple of days, when we started dosing our efforts. This is the first time since I started racing in cars that we’ve finished a race without a single mechanical problem,” Peterhansel said.
South African Giniel de Villiers and German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz improved on their 2012 result by finishing one place higher, in second overall – 42 minutes off the lead. The pair has once again proved that consistency and patience are critical for a good result at the end of a grueling two weeks in their Imperial Toyota Hilux.
“It was a difficult race; the Dakar is never easy. There were many good things about it. We finished second after putting up quite a fight and proved that the Hilux has made leaps and bounds. We were a bit unlucky at times, which prevented us from finishing a bit closer to Stéphane (Peterhansel). He, on the other hand, had a perfect race. At any rate, the Hilux has become much more reliable, I’m extremely pleased. You need a bit of luck in the Dakar. You need the wind to blow in your favour. It wasn’t always the case, but that’s racing. If we work harder to tweak our preparations, perhaps we can build upon this base to do better,” de Villiers admitted.
Another X-Raid Mini made the podium, the #307 entry of Leonid Novitsky and Konstantin Zhiltsov. The Russian duo also managed to avoid too much drama and eventually finished 1 hour 28 minutes off the pace.
The Red Bull Qatar team made up of former Dakar winners Carlos Sainz and Nasser Al-Attiyah started positively in their buggies, but after threatening Peterhansel a number of times, both Sainz and Al-Attiyah had to retire due to reliability issues. Americans Robby Gordon and Kellon Walch also had a Dakar to forget, as they finished more than five hours in arrears.
South African off-road champions Duncan Vos and Rob Howie had to retire after their Imperial Hilux suffered roll cage damage, and further on in the car category compatriots Johan van Staden and Mike Lawrenson also retired early. In the quad category Sarel van Biljon flew the South African flag high and managed an impressive total of three stage wins and finished 21st overall in his maiden Dakar. In the bike division, Riaan van Niekerk, Darryl Curtis and Brett Cummings finished 13th, 32nd and 43rd overall respectively.
