MOTORSPORT: Minis too hot for Dakar rivals

Competitors endure marathon rally’s harshest conditions
Five days into the sweltering Dakar Rally the Minis are right on top.

The top three places, in the two-week event across South America, are filled by Mini All4s.

The event is proving more torturous than ever, compounded by navigational difficulties and countless punctures.

The Dakar’s most successful competitor, Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, had six punctures on day three.

Temperatures reached 47 degrees in the Sierra Hombre Muerto Mountains (along the fifth stage from Chilecito to San Miguel de Tucuman in Argentina) and organisers cut 100km from the competition because of safety concerns.

Spaniard Nani Roma is the only two-time stage winner so far this year and leads overall, more than half an hour ahead of Argentinean Orlando Terranova.

Peterhansel is third, almost 40 minutes behind Roma, and the 11-time winner of the Dakar – six times on motorcycles and five times on four wheels, including the past two years – said the fifth stage had been the toughest on the event for years, certainly since it moved from Europe and Africa in 2009.

South African Giniel de Villiers is fourth in his Toyota Hilux, less than 1½ minutes behind Peterhansel’s Mini.

Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah is fifth in another X-Raid Mini but is almost 1½ hours behind leader Roma.

Spaniard Carlos Sainz, winner of the fourth stage in his two-wheel-drive SMG buggy and the overall leader at that point, has dropped to eighth after a horror fifth day – mainly navigational problems which meant he was only 26th for the latest stage.   

American Robby Gordon had a much better day though, in his Hummer, finishing third on the stage after having lost several hours to the leaders on the earlier days – but he has since copped a one-hour penalty dropping him to 19th for day five.

A Haval 8, made by China’s Great Wall Motors, is in sixth place after a sister car driven by Portugal’s Carlos Sousa narrowly won the first stage but dropped out early on day two.

Team Ford Racing had its best day yet on the fifth stage, claiming the South African-prepared Ranger driven by Argentine Lucio Alvarez finished seventh – less than two minutes behind Peterhansel and Al-Attiyah – but even that still left it only 45th overall.
Alvarez said he drove without rear brakes for most of the stage.

“It was very hard on the car as there were a lot of big jumps with hard landings,” Alvarez said.

“It was also extremely hot and I drank about three litres of water in the first part of the stage alone.”

Team Ford Racing’s second Ranger, with a South African crew, rolled out of the event earlier and team manager Neil Woolridge had said on day four that “we’ve had nothing but problems since we got to South America … it’s all been very frustrating”.

After a two-part sixth stage from Tucaman to Salta tonight, Australian time, the competitors will get a day’s rest before continuing through Bolivia and Chile.

“In Salta we will give the (Alvarez) car a thorough rebuild and we’re looking forward to a better second half of the rally,” Woolridge said.

“We’re building on the momentum (of the past two stages).”

The Australian entry of Czech-born Peter Jerie and Glenn Watman in a 2008 Isuza D-Max was 66th on stage five and improved from 74th to 66th overall.

The Polaris SSV of fellow Aussie Garry Connell and Swedish co-driver Annie Seel was 75th after day four but has yet to appear on the stage five results at the time of writing.

In the event’s bike section, Marc Coma, on a KTM, has taken the lead from his Honda-mounted countryman Joan Barreda Bort, with France’s reigning winner Cyril Depres now almost 1½ hours behind on a Yamaha.

Australia’s top rider Ben Grabham, who was in the top 10 after two days, crashed his KTM out of the rally on stage four.
Troy O’Connor is now the leading Aussie in 47th on another KTM.

Allan Roberts (KTM) and the Dakar Challenge winner from the Australasian Safari, Shane Diener (Yamaha), are still in the event - Roberts is 51st after stage five - but two other Aussies who were on KTMs, Mark Davidson and Clayton Jacobsen, are out.

That will leave Lotus with only eight days of testing, for its Renault-powered E22 car in two stints in Bahrain, ahead of the season-opening round of the world championship in Melbourne on March 14-16.

Lotus is trying to put a positive spin on its absence from the Jerez test, saying other teams will miss it too, but it may be a clue to continuing major financial woes at the outfit that finished fourth in last year’s constructors’ championship.

The team has lost ace driver Kimi Raikkonen, its winner in Melbourne last year, because of its failure to pay him last season.

A new major investor never eventuated and Raikkonen has rejoined Ferrari alongside Fernando Alonso, while Frenchman Romain Grosjean is joined at Lotus by Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado, who brings massive oil sponsorship money from his homeland.

Lotus team principal, Eric Boullier has said: “Everything is fine here. Lotus will be on the grid this year and for a long time.

“It is true that the car will not be ready in time, but we will be ready shortly after that (the Jerez test on January 28-31).

“In some ways it is not bad because we will have time to watch what the other teams are doing and nobody will be able to watch what we are doing.”

However, British magazine Autosport analyst Craig Scarborough said the Lotus decision was “baffling” and would inflame rumours about its budget and resources.

“The technical regulations have changed fundamentally – there is a new turbo engine, energy recovery system, gearbox, braking system and aerodynamics to test, as well as the latest specification Pirelli tyres,” Scarborough said.

“As most of these technologies are untested on track losing a third of its pre-season running will be a serious setback in Lotus’s preparation for Australia.”

The latest film, “Life at the Limit,” was launched in Britain this week and traces the history of safety in the sport, from the crusade begun by Jackie Stewart in the 1960s to the work of F1’s late medical officer, Professor Sid Watkins.

David Tremayne, reviewing the film for his contemporary Joe Saward’s blog, said that the use of the Brundle tumble roll in a Jordan car (near where track marshal Graham Beveridge was killed four years later) “cleverly sets the scene and then draws things to a conclusion that underlines the massive progress made in four decades”.

“Life at the Limit is visceral, violent and tragic, but it is also tasteful yet spectacular and stands as a moving epitaph to the fallen (drivers) and a celebration of how their individual sacrifices were an integral part of so much that has molded the sport into what it is today,” Tremayne said.

“You may have watched the willfully inaccurate hype that was Rush; now go see the real thing, told by a filmmaker (Paul Crowder) who really understood what he was working with and respected it.”

Meanwhile, Eddie Irvine – who won four GPs since the last death in an F1 race, that of Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna 20 years ago – has been sentenced to six months’ jail in Italy - but will probably never serve it.

Irvine, now 48 and who raced for Jordan, Ferrari (with which he scored his wins) and Jaguar, and Gabriele Moratti, 35, the son of a former Milan mayor, were convicted of “mutual injury” in a 2008 fight at the Hollywood nightclub in Milan.

Appeals and the length of time since the incident, are likely to mean neither will do time in jail.

Sinclair was James Courtney’s race engineer in his 2010 title season with Dick Johnson Racing and followed him the next year to Holden Racing Team, where he has headed its ‘Car of the Future’ development.

Veteran V8 Supercar driver Russell Ingall may yet race full-time in the championship – in a Holden Commodore with Lucas Dumbrell’s tailender team.

Other options for Ingall (15th in last year’s championship in a Walkinshaw Performance Commodore) appear to be as endurance co-driver to his replacement Tim Slade, or perhaps to fill the Ford Performance endurance vacancy with 2013 Bathurst 1000 winner Mark Winterbottom after Steven Richards’ switch to Triple Eight Race Engineering.

Ingall won the 2005 championship in a Ford.

Frenchman Alex Premat has confirmed his departure from Garry Rogers Motorsport as it transforms to Volvo Polestar Racing, leaving the championship without a full-time foreign driver apart from the New Zealanders.

However, Swedes Robert Dahlgren and Thed Bjork are thought to be at the head of the list to fill the vacancy alongside Rogers’ young Kiwi star Scott McLaughlin, a two-time V8 Supercar race winner last season.

Gallery of the 2014 Dakar Rally

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