Iveco Powerstar truck driver Gerard De Rooy has secured a convincing victory in the opening eight stage of the second week of the 2016 Dakar Rally, seizing both the stage and the top spot in the overall standings – by a margin of six minutes.
The first seven stages (and first week) of this year’s rally, which is set across Argentina and Bolivia, took place over an uncharacteristic range of terrains for the originally desert-based competition.
De Rooy earlier expressed his misgivings over the current format of the rally, telling Motorsport.com:
“We have done well the first week, but it was not what we expected. The roads were more like those of the World Rally Championship and these are not my specialty. This is a strange Dakar – with mountains, altitude, roads and a lot of speed. It’s a Dakar in name only. It’s a different concept.”
However, the eighth stage/day returned to a more familiar setting with a strong focus on navigation, and Gerard de Rooy skillfully threaded his way across a 534km stretch of the northern Argentinian dunes to land first place in the general classification.
The victory moved De Rooy and his Iveco Powerstar from five minuted behind and second in the rankings to his Dutch compatriot rival and MAN driver Peter Versluis to over six minutes ahead.
Iveco’s second Powerstar driver, Federico Villagra, landed in sixth place in the general classification, while Iveco’s two Trakker teams also landed places in the top 10 rankings.
Versluis is driving an MAN TGS 480 vehicle, and was followed in fourth by his colleague Hans Stacey in an MAN TGA, while remaining four places in the top places were claimed by Russian Kamaz trucks and their drivers, led by Eduard Nikolaev in third.
The second week of the rally will continue with its “marathon” stages, in which the competitors will not be allowed to receive help from their teams at the end of the day, while the vehicles will be held for the night in a closed park.
One upset in this year’s race came when Renault Trucks contender Martin van den Brink, who took an impressive victory in Rally Morocco late last year, had to retire after Stage 2 of the race after his vehicle caught fire.
“I felt that there was no brake pressure anymore and in a right turn we hit a wall,” Van den Brink recalled. “Our mechanic Richard Mouw then went to look and screamed that there was fire.”
