Now we are second

The Dakar Rally sometimes reminds me of a roller coaster: the day before yesterday, we won a stage. Yesterday, we lost ten minutes. Today, we moved one position ahead in the overall classification. This was possible as the eleventh leg from Tidjikja to Tichit was the longest stage of the event at 520 kilometres, demanding everything from everybody.

Very sharp stones were hidden by a thin cover of sand. This is where we had our first puncture. We had to change the wheel on the Nega pass before the first checkpoint. It worked pretty well as we were just one minute slower than Hiroshi Masuoka on CP1. He also blew a tyre afterwards, as did Jean-Pierre Fontenay.

At one point, the roadbook was not very precise so that Hiroshi, Kenjiro and I got lost. We all met again at the top of a dune where we stopped to look after the right direction. Kenjiro started first and headed left but he got stuck in the sand, losing more than ten minutes in the process. Shortly before the end of the stage, I closed up on Hiroshi and Jean-Pierre so that we finished the stage almost at the same time.

Hiroshi certainly had not an easy day today as he had to open the track. Due to Kenjiro's loss of time and thanks to our own performance, we moved one position ahead. We are second now and narrowed the gap to Hiroshi by five minutes.

On Thursday, there will be a loop stage  of 450 kilometres, starting and finishing in Tichit.

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