Dakar STAGE 2 : Cordoba / Tucuman

THEY’VE GOT DOUBLE VISION

The two title holders, Cyril Despres and Carlos Sainz, both won their second consecutive stage on the Personal Dakar Argentina Chile 2011. In the bike category, the Frenchman boasts a lead of 2’35” over Marc Coma. As regards the Volkswagen, Sainz has a lead of 3’05” over the X3 BMW driven by Stephane Peterhansel.

Already delighted with the performance of Ruben Faria during the afternoon, Cyril Despres learned yesterday evening that in fact he had picked up victory on stage 1, after a one minute penalty was handed out to his team-mate for breaking the speed limit. As a result, the title holder tackled the second day of the race as leader, with the responsibility of opening the road. Even the day’s task was not the most demanding in terms of navigation, Despres succeeded in achieving the hardest trick in rally-raid racing: staying out in front from start to finish, as well as opening up the gap a little on his closest rivals. On completion of the 300-km special, the Frenchman boasted the best time, winning the 25th stage in his career on the Dakar. It is only the third time that he has triumphed when opening the road.

Whilst it is premature to make predictions, a traditional duel is starting to be outlined with Marc Coma, who finished 1’49 behind on the stage, trailing 2’35” in the general standings. Ruben Faria, in 3rd place, is already 6’13” behind. Furthermore, the day held revelations about the capacity of David Casteu. The Sherco rider, after a discrete first stage, was the quickest pursuer of the KTM bikes on the route to Tucuman. Trailing the leading duo by 3’46”, he climbed up to 6th position in the general standings, but remains behind Francisco “Chaleco” Lopez and Paulo Gonçalves. The battle between Aprilia, BMW and Sherco is underway and might not just be a battle for the crumbs left by KTM. However, Pal-Anders Ullevalseter, runner-up last year, will have difficulty getting involved, in light of the trouble he is having adapting to his new machine: “I miss my 690cc,” joked the Norwegian, 29th in the general standings after only two stages!

Alejandro Patronelli regained some prestige for the brotherhood of Argentinean quad riders by winning the stage after a very tough struggle with Josef Machacek. The Czech leader lost by only 24” but holds onto command of the general standings with a lead of 5’01” over the older of the Patronelli brothers. Marcos Patronelli finished the day’s special in 6th, 10 minutes behind, and shows that he has not given up after the 6 hour penalty inflicted by the race officials yesterday for his failure to arrive at the special stage start point at the scheduled time.

It was via Carlos Sainz that Spain equalised in the ‘match’ underway with France. Just like the day before, “El Matador” was the first to start the special. Similarly, he again had to slalom through the showers which fell on the region. And just for tradition’s sake, he finished this 324-km festival with the best time, giving him the 19th stage victory of his career on the Dakar. Naturally, on a route whose type was very similar to a traditional rally, his skills as two times world champions made for a sparkling performance when he hit the tracks. However, Nasser Al Attiyah, also an expert in this field in spite of a smaller roll of honour, showed that he can give the Spaniard food for thought. The Qatari finished 1’03” behind his team-mate today, but Stéphane Peterhansel is still the most threatening rival for Sainz, 3’05” behind.

In the rest of the field, it was someone else’s turn to have problems since Guerlain Chicherit, who lost almost an hour on stage one, regained a standing which better suits his expectations for his Mini Countryman: he grabbed the 7th best time, after having overtaken a dozen cars on his way. However, Mark Miller, following a crash after 45 km, finished the stage in slow motion, since he was forced to stop on several occasions. In total, he took almost 50 minutes more than his team-mate Carlos Sainz to finish his day’s work. In the confrontation between the Race Touaregs and the X3, there is some sort of balance. With De Villiers (VW, 4th), Terranova (BMW X3, 5th) and Holowczyc (BMW X3, 6th), there are 3 models of each car in the first 6 of the day’s places.

TRUCK RACE

With the first 5 trucks through CP2 on the day’s car-truck special, It’s finally the Russian Firdaus Kabirov (Kamaz) who boasts the best provisional time. It’s his 34th victory of stage on Dakar, the first in 2011. The 2009 winner finally finish 1’20 » before Ales Loprais (Tatra) and 5’09’’ before Franz Echter (MAN)

Chagin is now on the 3rd position only.

They said…

Stephane Peterhansel: “Not easy to try and follow Sainz’s pace” (auto) (dossard 301)
“It was a stage with everything again. A very technical special, but very nice to drive. It isn’t easy to try and follow Sainz’s pace. It’s easy to be surprised by the tight bends, and there were a lot of them. But that’s motorsport. Everyone can have problems. Last year we had our fair share. I hope that this year we’ll manage to avoid them. In any case, you can see that on these very technical stages, Carlos is slightly quicker than us and we’ll perhaps have to wait until the desert to find a chink in his armour”

Carlos Sainz: “I had windscreen wiper problems again”
“It was a difficult stage to tackle again and I had windscreen wiper problems again – they wouldn’t work properly. For a dozen kilometres, I couldn’t see a thing and I had to drive very slowly. I’m very disappointed. I’ve probably lost a lot of time. I don’t understand why we still have this problem, because the mechanics checked everything yesterday. Overall, though, this stage suited me rather well”.

The live, all the complete rankings on the website : www.dakar.com

Tuesday, 4th January > Leg 3: San Miguel de Tucuman – San Salvador de Jujuy
Red and green

Bikes – Quads / Road section, 231 km Special, 521 km – Cars / Road section, 231 km Special, 500 km
Trucks / Road section, 408 km Special, 226 km

To reach Jujuy, the special stage has been split into two parts, separated by a neutralised section. On the first part, the bikers will again be racing on their own track, plunging into the desert canyons where the red of the sand and cliffs is the dominant colour. There is a striking contrast with the second timed portion: the race moves to earthen tracks and the vehicles will disappear into thick green forest. The trucks have been excused from this challenge, deemed too dangerous for the windscreens which are at the same level as tree branches.

The Personal Dakar Argentina Chile in figures :

9500 kms, including 5000 competitive kms over 13 stages
407 competitors at the start
2500 people at the bivouac
2000 breakfasts / 1600 rations / 1000 lunches and 2300 dinners/ bivouac
12000 bottles of water / bivouac
25 000 police officers and national security guards mobilised
350 000 safety flyers handed out along the route
1 000 000 persons on the start in Buenos Airs on the 1st of January 2011

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