Isidre Esteve and Txema Villalobos had to manage their pace on the tenth special stage of the Dakar to reach the finish and take one more step - the penultimate one - towards their goal, which is none other than to climb onto the finish podium in Yanbu this coming Friday. A problem with a new rear differential and an early puncture have conditioned the performance of the Repsol Toyota Rally Team on Wednesday's stage.
On Tuesday night, the Spanish team opted to change the rear differential to prevent internal pinion fatigue. Overdrive assistance provided them with a spare differential from those they had in storage, but Isidre Esteve suspects that something must have been wrong with the part in question.
"As soon as we set off on the special, in the first corner, we could no longer keep the car on the line. There must be a problem with the differential preload; the car is loose in the back and does not stay on the trajectory, neither accelerating nor braking," explains the driver from Oliana (Lleida).
The setback caused Esteve and Villalobos to have a puncture about 30 kilometers from the start, as they were unable to control the car when braking on a rocky terrain. That made the rest of the route an exercise in pure survival. "From then on, we had to slow down, run in high gear, and try not to accelerate suddenly or brake suddenly. We had to ride smoothly to get to the finish", said the rider from Lleida.
The puncture relegated the Toyota Hilux T1+ with the colors of Repsol, MGS Seguros, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Spain and KH-7 to 61st absolute provisional place at the second way point, after an hour of racing to overcome the initial 91 kilometers. However, the sustained pace imposed by Esteve to adapt his riding to the circumstances allowed him to gain positions steadily, until he reached the penultimate waypoint in 32nd place. In the final stretch of the 371-kilometer timed stage, the Spanish team slowed down a little more to make sure not to get a puncture and finally came in 51st position (22nd among the T1+ cars).
Once the special stage was over, Isidre Esteve regretted not having been able to go all out on a special stage that he described as "very beautiful", mostly on fast dirt tracks. "Now we will disassemble the differential so that our mechanics can see exactly what is happening with this particular part," said the driver.
In any case, the Repsol Toyota Rally Team is already one day closer to completing a Dakar that is proving to be very tough. This Thursday, the eleventh stage will take the caravan from Al-Ula, where it started almost two weeks ago, to Yanbu, where it will finish the day after tomorrow. It won't be a day of formality, because the special stage will be no less than 420 kilometers against the clock, full of rocks and stones.
Automatic translation of the Spanish version available on www.todoterreno.pt
Source Repsol Toyota Rally Team
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