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 | Dakar Rally 2013: S. Peterhansel - "We must avoid making any mistakes".
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In the fourth stage of the 2013 Dakar Rally, from Nazca to Arequipa, the Monster Energy X-raid Team’s Mini All4 Racing once again proved to be the fastest AWD vehicle in the field, with French pairing Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret taking their green Mini to third position behind the two buggies of Nasser Al Attiyah and Guerlain Chicherit.
With this result, Peterhansel succeeded in defending his lead in the overall ranking. "It’s a question of strategy," said the French driver. "We must avoid making any mistakes - no matter if it’s about the navigation, the driving or the technology. If we succeed in doing so we will be able to prevail against the buggies."
Meanwhile, Spaniard Nani Roma and his French co-driver Michel Périn demonstrated again that the bad luck that had encountered on day two didn’t make an impact on their competitiveness. They finished fifth, with their yellow Mini.
"Today’s special stage proved to be difficult, too," revealed Roma. "We had to stop for a moment as we had to inflate the tires after the dunes and Chicherit used this moment to overtake us. Consequently, we had to continue behind him and lost some time." By coming sixth, the Russians Leonid Novitskiy and Konstantin Zhiltsov completed the great team result for the Team.
Chilean Boris Garafulic and his French team-mate Gilles Picard took their Mini to 17th position while Argentinean Orlando Terranova and Portuguese Paolo Fiúza took their BMW X3 CC to 22nd place. A technical problem cost the Germans Stephan Schott and Holm Schmidt a lot of time and therefore, they still are on their way to completing the special stage.
Following the second special stage, the race control had opted for crediting 21 minutes to Carlos Sainz as he stated that his GPS system (that is provided by the organisers) was damaged. The X-raid Team appealed against this decision and on the evening of day three, this appeal was successful. Consequently, the 21 minutes were added again to the Spaniard’s overall time.
2013/01/09 | 11:39 CET | ARTICLE: MR/HS/X-RAID
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