The second week of the world’s toughest off-road race has just begun and already there has been a shake-up in the standings.
Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah (Demon Jefferies Buggy) saw his chances of winning his second Dakar evaporate as he suffered many mechanical issues during stage nine of this year’s race. The 2011 champ was overtaken by South African Giniel de Villiers (Toyota Hilux) who looked set to take his first stage win on the two-part 593-kilometre special stage nine between San Miguel de Tucuman and Cordoba but suffered brake problems which slowed is progress.
De Villiers: “Everything was going fine when, 100 km from the finish, the front brake disc simply blew up. We had to stop and in the end we set off again with almost no brakes until the finish. It’s a pity because we were driving very fast and we could have gone on like this until the end. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I overtook Chichi and saw he was off the track, I think he broke a wheel. Now we’ll do our best, we’ve got to keep believing.”
De Villiers finished 9 minutes 39 seconds behind eventual stage winner Nani Roma (Mini). The car category is still lead by Stephane Peterhansel (Mini) by 49 min 31 sec over De Villiers. Leonid Novitsky (Mini) is a scant 6 min 32 sec behind the Hilux driver.
In the quad category Marcos Patronelli mantained his lead and finished 1 minute 05 seconds down on stage winner Łukasz Łaskawiec, who grabbed his second career win at the Dakar while Patronelli extended his overall lead to 1 hour 32 minutes over Ignacio Casale and 2 hours 08 minutes over Rafal Sonik.
A half-hour Dakar highlights package is screened on SuperSport2 (DStv channel 202) at 10pm every day, with five repeats the following day.
