Defending Dakar Rally champion Giniel de Villiers was in top form on the eighth stage of this year’s edition of the world’s toughest motor race. Giniel led the 472-km sprint from Antofagasta to Copiapo in Chile until stopped by two successive punctures on his Volkswagen Race Touareg within the last seven kilometres. The South African and his German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz eventually had to settle for fourth place, 4min 01sec behind stage winners Stephane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret of France (BMW X3). De Villiers, whose hopes of a second successive Dakar victory were dashed when he lost over two hours on stage three on Monday with electrical problems, is now on position ninth overall.
VW team-mates Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz of Spain continue to lead the race overall after finishing second on Sunday, 45sec behind the BMW driver. Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah and Timo Gottschalk of Germany are still second overall in their 300 bhp Touareg after completing the stage in fifth place, but have now dropped back to 14min 35sec behind the Spanish pairing. American Mark Miller and South Africa’s Ralph Pitchford kept it a VW 1-2-3 in the overall standings with third place, after finishing stage eight 1min 07sec behind Peterhansel.
The Frenchman, winner of three Dakars in a car and six on bikes, moved up a place to fourth overall at the expense of team-mates Guerlain Chicherit of France and Swede Tina Thorner (BMW X3), but is a distant 1h 35m 57s behind Miller.
Stage eight followed a rest day at Antofagasta on the Pacific coastline of Chile, which provided some of the competitors with welcome relief from the gruelling battle with the elements. Others straggled in to the bivouac throughout the day, with 32 cars still out on the stage at midnight on Friday. Sunday’s stage, which marked the start of the second half of the 9 000-km race, was the penultimate one in the Atacama desert and was described by Pitchford, the 2009 SA rally champion co-driver, as very hard with lots of rocks. All four Volkswagens suffered two punctures each.
"That was by far the most picturesque and difficult stage of the 2010 Dakar Rally so far,” commented De Villiers. “Fields of scree, canyons and at the end plenty of sand and of course many changes in rhythm between fast and slow sections – this is exactly how Dakar stages must be made. Unfortunately Lady Luck has deserted us during this rally. We could have won today's stage but two punctures put paid to this. With a little more luck our slow puncture, which had already held several hundreds of kilometres, would not have needed changing only 30 kilometres before the finish.”
“We know that we cannot win as we are too far behind now. We are aiming to finish in the top 5, and plan to support the team as much as we can. We are carrying a lot of spares (spare turbo, wishbones, driveshafts) for our team mates and have essentially become the quick assistance team. We are going to do our best to ensure a VW 1-2-3 podium finish.”
Today’s 338-km stage from Copiapo to La Serena is the last one in the Atacama desert before heading south to Santiago and then Wednesday’s crossing over the Andes mountains and back into Argentina.
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