The Repsol Toyota Rally Team will have to complete tomorrow the second part of the sixth stage of the Dakar, the 48-hour time trial, due to a technical problem. The setback caused Isidre Esteve and Txema Villalobos to lose 10 hours and forced them to stop 47 kilometers from the finish to spend the night. The Spanish team will resume the march this Saturday early in the morning to reach the finish line in Shubaytah and, thus, continue in the race.
Last Thursday, the driver from Oliana (Lleida) and his co-driver from Calonge (Girona) had reached bivouac "D", the fourth of the seven bivouacs on this sixth special stage. With 402 timed kilometers covered (of the 547 total), this Friday they had another 145 kilometers ahead of them. However, when they had passed a third of the special, the front differential broke, an almost insurmountable handicap in a time trial entirely on very soft sand dunes, in the inhospitable desert of the Empty Quarter.
Esteve and Villalobos tried to keep going, with great difficulty, until night fell. Then they decided to stop at the last of the seven camps, the "G", and complete the remaining kilometers the next day, already with daylight.
Now the goal of the team with the colors of Repsol, MGS Seguros, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Spain and KH-7 is to take advantage of the rest day, to be held this Saturday in Riyadh, to join the caravan. To do so, they will have to travel around 1,000 kilometers to the capital of Saudi Arabia, so they will miss the day of theoretical rest that the rest of the participants will have enjoyed.
Automatic translation of the Spanish version available on www.todoterreno.pt
Source Repsol Toyota Rally Team
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