Easy come easy go

Yesterday a stage victory at a margin of 5.30 minutes, today on the way to Tidjikja a pucture and a loss of ten minutes! Destiny can be cruel sometimes. Andreas Schulz an dI spent some four minutes to swap tyres. The remaining six minutes are the result of a stage which simply didn't allow my to find any rhythm.

Up to the first checkpoit, we were quite good with only Kenjiro Shinozuka being a second ahead. But after the blown tyre, we entered a section which was covered by camel grass. A brief explanation: camel grass is growing on small hills of sand. The growing grass means that the hills are so strong that you believe to hit a rock when you clip them at our speed.

In these conditions, I wasn't prepared to afford a high risk. Hiroshi Masuoka did risk quite a lot and he had good luck, although he was joking afterwards that he was flying so often that he takes a licence now to fly an aeroplane. My two further team mates, however, suffered very hard, showing that these conditions are just extremely hard to the car. Whilst Jean-Pierre Fontenay's car ran into differential troubles, Kenjiro Shinozuka ploughed into an obstacle, destroying parts of the car. Additionally, he punctured a tyre. In the bivouac, he was treated for an injured finger and he was wearing a neck support. Very honestly: this is not the kind of thing Andreas and I would like to experience. Not to mention that you can damage the suspension of your car, and then the rally is over. On Wednesday, we contest the longest leg of the event, covering 520 kilometres.

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