Overdrive Racing and Toyota Gazoo Racing look ahead to the second week of the 46th Dakar Rally with four Toyota Hiluxes running inside the top 10.
With six stages still to run on what has been one of the most difficult Dakars in recent memory, the team heads into week two with mixed emotions after long-time leader Yazeed Al-Rajhi and his co-driver Timo Gottschalk crashed out of the overall lead 51km into the sixth stage.
Despite rolling on the fifth special in the dunes, Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Brazilian driver Lucas Moraes and his Spanish co-driver Armand Monleón are well-placed in fourth overall and third of the crews registered for the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC).
Guillaume de Mévius and Xavier Panseri won the opening stage and overcame time delays later in the week to hold fifth place in their Toyota GR DKR Hilux prepared by Overdrive Racing.
South African veteran Giniel de Villiers and Dennis Murphy are classified in sixth, fellow countrymen Guy Botterill and Brett Cummings are 10th and the French crew of Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq are 11th in their Overdrive Racing Toyota.
Chicherit said: “That 48-hour stage (six) will remain in the history of the Dakar and in our memories. The 547km was terribly demanding. I suffered, like last year, from the pain in the dunes (motion sickness) but I take comfort in knowing that I was not alone. Alex and I spent the night with Nasser and Mathieu (Al-Attiyah and Baumel) and Mattias and Emil (Ekström and Bergkvist) in the camp after 436km in the middle of the desert. It was magical. We are now at the gates of the top 10 and I have six more specials to get into the top five.”
Denis Krotov and Konstantin Zhiltsov are still in contention for the top 10 in their 15th-placed Overdrive Racing Toyota and the Italian pairing of Eugenio Amos and Paulo Ceci are classified in 23rd.
Ronan Chabot and Gilles Picard are not registered for the W2RC, but the French crew are running in 47th, seven places ahead of Argentina’s Juan-Cruz Yacopini and Spanish co-driver Daniel Oliveras, who lost a lot of time with suspension damage in the dunes. Lionel and Lucie Baud are 57th overall.
Talented young American Seth Quintero is no longer eligible to challenge for Dakar honours after his Hilux underwent an engine block change and he incurred massive time penalties but he and Dennis Zenz are continuing in a bid to grab valuable W2RC points.
Al-Hofuf – Riyadh
A long road section and a dune stage of 117.52km was on the agenda for stage five between Al-Hofuf and Al-Shubaytah and no-one really wanted to be first on the road before the 48-hour Marathon session in the vast Empty Quarter.
The fifth special was a superb one for Overdrive Racing and four cars filled the top five positions, with Chicherit, Yacopini, Al-Rajhi and De Mévius coming home in second, third, fourth and fifth places behind the stage-winning Al-Attiyah. The result enabled Al-Rajhi to extend his overall lead to 9min 03sec, while De Mévius climbed to eighth overall and Krotov moved up to 15th.
Al-Rajhi said: "We didn't want to open the road tomorrow. This was our plan. During the special, Timo and I were unsure whether to slow down or not, but I reckon we did the right thing by not easing up too much. Tomorrow will be different. We'll go on the offensive and see how it goes."
Despite help from fellow countryman Marcos Baumgart, time losses after an accident in the dunes pushed Moraes back to 10th in his TGR Toyota and Quintero was able to continue with massive time penalties after an engine block change the previous evening.
The Dakar then featured a new 48-hour Marathon stage through the vast Empty Quarter from Shubaytah with competitors able to help each other with basic repairs and maintenance, although the various teams were split over eight different overnight bivouacs.
At 16.00hrs on Thursday, vehicles were required to stop and head to the closest designated bivouac they came across with no idea of their rivals’ stage progress. Motorcycles and quads tackled a different route to cars and trucks, although the stage for the cars was shortened from 570km to 547km over concerns that vehicles may run out of fuel in the soft sand.
Al-Rajhi’s dream of winning the Dakar for the first time ended with a high-speed crash after 51km. The car ended up badly damaged after the impact and the uninjured crew were transported back to the bivouac in Shubaytah. “After 51 kilometres, everything was okay on a very fast chott and we were at full speed when I hit something,” said the Saudi. “The car did a barrel roll and now it is damaged.”
Chicherit was running amongst the leading group in seventh, despite complaining of dune sickness, and the Frenchman camped out under the stars with Al-Attiyah and Ekström before resuming his challenge over the second part of the stage. Yacopini suffered rear suspension problems after 145km.
The stage win eventually fell to Sébastien Loeb, as four-time winner Carlos Sainz snatched the overall lead and Moraes, Chicherit, De Villiers and De Mévius completed one of the toughest stages of their careers in fourth, sixth, eighth and ninth places.
Action continues on Sunday, January 14th with a run west and then north towards Al-Duwadimi and the city of Ha’il.
Teams will then pass through the northern deserts and the northwestern region of the Kingdom over three remaining stages between Al-Ula and the finish in Yanbu on the Red Sea on January 19th.
Source: Overdrive Racing
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