
American Robby Gordon has closed the comfortable gap once owned by 9-time Dakar winner Stepahne Peterhansel on the ninth special of the event yesterday. Despite the best efforts by Peterhansel and Jean Paul Cottret to keep ahead, Gordon pushed his Hummer to the front of the field and stayed there.
“It was a very good special for us again. Now it's just a waiting game to see how soon Peterhansel comes behind me. On the transfer stage, I think we had him beat by about a minute and a half. But we need more than a minute and a half, so I pushed very hard on the last section, as hard as I could go the whole time and it will be interesting to see how much time we put on him because we pushed, like qualifying hard, not really knowing where you're going,” Gordon admitted at the bivouac in Iquique.
For his part, Peterhansel put on an amazing effort to come within 19 seconds of Gordon with his turbodiesel Mini by the final checkpoint. After that, Gordon laid down the hammer over the final 80 km to keep the Frenchman at bay.
“We're in a different position to him. He has to conserve his time and I've got to make it. We've got four days left, four real days of racing left and the Hummer's strong. 19 seconds? He made a lot of time up on me, then. I can't believe he could catch us there, because we were going crazy. So he's a madman; if he beats us, he's a madman,” said Gordon of Peterhansel’s feat.
Nani Roma capitalised on a minor incident by Poland’s Krzysztof Holowczyc and Belgian Jean-Marc Fortin, who rolled their Mini and were assisted by spectators and a biker to get the Mini up onto all fours and running again. Spaniard Roma managed to close the gap between him and Holowczyc by half, and is now 2 minutes and 37 seconds adrift of third overall.
Stage 9 also saw the end of defending champion Nasser Al-Attiyah and Lucas Cruz’s 2012 effort. The Qatari had suffered endless problem with his Hummer over the past two-and a half weeks, and finally bowed out thanks to trouble with the Hummer’s alternator.
South African Giniel de Villiers soldiers on in fifth overall in his V8 Hilux, despite constantly losing time to the top runners, now 54 minutes adrift of Gordon’s Hummer. Duncan Vos, the in the second SA-backed Hilux has jumped two positions overall and now lies in ninth position, two hours and 44 minutes behind the leader.
Rankings overall
1. Stephane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret (FRA/Mini) 24hr 41min 14sec
2. Robby Gordon/Johnny Campbell (USA/Hummer) at 5min 58sec
3. Krzysztof Holowczyc/Jean-Marc Fortin (POL/BEL/Mini) 16:49
4. Nani Roma/Michel Perin (ESP/FRA/Mini) 19:26
5. Giniel de Villiers/Dirk Von Zitzewitz (RSA/GER/Toyota) 54:10
6. Leonid Novitskiy/Andreas Schulz (RUS/GER/Mini) 1hr 29:20
7. Carlos Sousa/Jean-Pierre Garcin (POR/FRA/Great Wall) 1hr 44:27
8. Lucio Alvarez/Ronnie Graue (ARG/Toyota) 2hr 31:35
9. Duncan Vos/Robert Howie (RSA/Toyota) 2hr 44:41
10. Erik Van Loon/Harmen Scholtalbers (NLD/Mitsubishi) 2hr 59:12