South African Imperial Toyota drivers Giniel de Villiers and Leeroy Poulter showed what the locally built Hilux was capable of on yesterday’s second stage of the Dakar, the longest special of the 2015 rally raid, by finishing second and 12th – just 8 minutes 30 seconds and 26 minutes 58 seconds behind stage winner Nasser Al-Attiyah’s Mini.
Poulter had been the centre of attention shortly after the start of the stage, as he checked in fastest at the early checkpoints. But Poulter and compatriot co-driver Rob Howie’s swift progress was cut off when they caught up with a few front-runners.
“We started the stage at a fast pace, and the car felt fantastic. But towards the end of the stage we caught up to the crews ahead of us, and that put a stop to our progress. Overall it was a good day for us, though we would have liked to have finished as strong as we started this morning,” Poulter said.
In reality it was Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah and Frenchman Mathieu Baumel who had been flying – especially after being penalized on stage 1 by two minutes when they were caught speeding in a non-competitive section. With the transponder in their X-Raid Mini malfunctioning, the pair were clocking fastest times not being picked up by the organizing company.
“We won the stage. This was a big thing today. This is the key of this Dakar. Now we can go calmly until the rest day. For the marathon day we can go really easily, but we will try every day to be like this. It was a plan today because we studied the stage very well,” Al-Attiyah said.
Dutchman Bernhard Ten Brinke surprised with his performance yesterday by rounding off the podium in his Overdrive Toyota Hilux – a fine result considering that this is only his third Dakar Rally.
“There were fast WRC tracks and also sandy pieces, so, yeah, it was nice but very hard for the body and the car. I think the temperature was also 45°C and it’s hard for everybody. Last year we had a lot of mechanical problems but now we are happy with the Toyota from Overdrive. They’ve built a very good car. Up to now we’ve been able to fight out at the front, but it’s not our goal to drive into the top 3 but to get a nice result,” Brinke said.
After being promoted to first place by Al-Attiyah’s penalty on day 1, Argentinian Orlando Terranova started out ahead of the pack and was embroiled in a tussle with his Qatari teammate until he crashed close to the finish – losing 22 minutes to his rival in the process.
“It was 10 km before the end. We came at it quite gently because we had some problem with the cooling temperature. But then in one moment, in a ditch, the car rolled four times. But we’re ok, no problems. We lost a lot of time – we had to put the car back on its wheels and change two tyres. The fuel pump was broken, so we lost a lot of minutes, too much. But we’re still in the race,” Terranova said.
Today’s third stage will see some off the pressure ease off as the field only have 542 km to tackle on the way to Chilecito from San Juan – of which just 284 km are timed
