With all four of their Race Touareg 3s in the top five, Volkswagen got their 2011 Dakar Rally campaign off to the perfect start in Argentina on Sunday.
Defending champion Carlos Sainz of Spain scored Volkswagen’s first stage win in this year’s event after he and Spanish co-driver Lucas Cruz completed the 222-km opening special stage from Victoria to Cordoba in a time of 2 hr 18 min 32 sec.
Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar and German co-driver Timo Gottschalk finished third behind the BMW X3 of France’s Stephane Peterhansel and 2 min 16 sec behind Sainz. American Mark Miller and his South African co-driver Ralph Pitchford were fourth, 4 min 17 sec behind the winner, with South Africa’s Giniel de Villiers and German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz, who won the Dakar in 2009, fifth and 5 min 06 sec in arrears.
After a New Year’s Day send off in the Argentinean capital city of Buenos Aires in front of a million spectators, the 407 competitors in the rally tackled the first of 13 special stages that will test them over some 5 000 km in Argentina and Chile. It was a tough start to the world’s longest and most challenging motor race with heavy thunderstorms making driving conditions a lot worse than expected.
Giniel de Villiers: “We were caught by as many as three thunderstorms today. The track became increasingly slippery and we lost time to the drivers who started in front of us. I’m relatively pleased, because our biggest gap was caused by sections that were soaked by rain and extremely slippery. But it’s nothing we can’t recover during the remaining 12 special stages.”
Ralph Pitchford: “We made a cautious start, just like we did last year, and were slowed down by a heavy thunderstorm. Mark had to work very hard to keep the car on the slippery road and avoid rocks along the sides. We’re in good shape, the car is great and there is still a long way to go before this is over.”
Monday’s second special stage, 324 km from Cordoba north to San Miguel de Tucuman, is entirely new and will feature even higher speeds than Sunday’s opening stage, with wider and faster tracks through forest and bush. The cars can expect a bumpy ride with several blind corners.
– Credit: Volkswagen of South Africa.