High-speed in the desert

This was quite an amazing stage: Actually, we expected an extremely tough and technically demanding stage, but what happened? We saw one of the fastest stages ever. My team mate Kenjiro Shinozuka who drove the 371 kilometre stage from Tan Tan in Morocco to Zouerat in Mauritania within just 2h34m43s won the stage at an average speed of 143.9 kph. Crazy! Particularly if you bear in mind the the top speed of the Pajero is some 160 kph in the sand which causes a very high rolling resistance.

Hiroshi Masuoka and I were unable to explain our gap of two and a half minutes and three minutes respectively to our common team-mate - Kenjiro simply had a great day after struggling on two consecutive legs. I remain fourth and even narrowed the gap to Hiroshi who is still in the lead by 23 seconds. Nissan driver Grégoire de Mevius is only seven seconds ahead of us. Perhaps we can still climb up the leaderboard on Saturday before the rest day on Sunday.

I am somewaht surprised by the fact that so many top competitors dropped out of contention at such an early stage after Jose-Maria Servia in the only remaining Schlesser Buggy retired after technical gremlins today. Who knows what will happen on the remaining part of the rally which is to be extremely difficult.

Find current results on the Dakar website or on the Mitsubishi website.