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On the first day of the marathon, Vanagas opted for tire storage tactics: inflate them with more pressure so they are less likely to get stoned. The higher tire pressure didn’t help when driving through the sand, but the pace still wasn’t bad.
The decision paid off: the team kept every wheel on the car and even loaned a spare to Toyota Gazoo Racing colleague Giniel de Villiers. The latter went through up to four at this stage.
“It seems that we will have to continue helping others in this Dakar. Ginielis is ahead of us in the car qualifying, so we may not have stopped, but he is a member of a team close to us, so everything is fine. Sooner we will know who will be on the track ”, commented the runner.
At the beginning of the speed section, the car jumped significantly over the dunes, which were used by buggy drivers. One of the jumps was bigger than expected, and after landing, B. Vanagas was hit so hard it felt like after the knockout.
“I didn’t understand where I was going for a good five minutes, but then everything fell into place,” he said.
Mechanics are not allowed to enter the bivouac during the marathon, so the runners must inspect the equipment themselves and, if necessary, eliminate any faults found. They will do all of this with just the tools and spare parts that were carried in the car.
Promised to win the Dakar
Yazeed Al Rajhi does not claim to be the leader in the final after the extremely difficult first stages, but for the Saudi rider, his performance on the home tracks has become a matter of honor. The athlete, who finished second on stage six, returned to driving at an impressive pace on Sunday and finished first.
The leader of the car classification, Stephane Peterhansel, is reluctant to leave the intrigue for the last day of the race. He defeated Carlos Sainz in the seventh stage of the X-Raid Mini buggy race. Nasser Al-Attiyah, who finished fourth on Sunday, is almost eight minutes behind the Frenchman in the overall standings.
With lengthy repairs to his broken suspension arm on stage six, Sebastien Loeb lost 10 hours but managed to return to the Chail bivouac overnight from Friday to Saturday. On the seventh stage, luck once again turned away from the rally champion: just 30 kilometers before the finish, one of the car’s axles broke.
Although this year he only left S. Loeb to gain experience and help the team improve the BRX prototype, on social media the rider promised to finally win the Dakar anyway.
Through sand and stones
On the first day of the marathon, the runners again spent a lot of time climbing the sand mountains and descending again. The longest stretch of almost continuous dunes at this stage covered almost 100 kilometers. Aggressive driving in such conditions could overheat the engine and also require clutch protection.
At the beginning of the seventh stage, the participants also had to overcome rocky plateaus with winding but fast sections. On the way from Chail to Sakaka, the athletes had to cover a total distance of 742 kilometers, of which 471 kilometers were the speed section.
More than one crew was spooked by 48 percent of the race organizers’ description of the speed section alongside the hard surface. number. As many participants have already seen, this actually meant that half the track would be made up of stones of all sizes and shapes.
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