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 | Estoril-Marrakech: Vigouroux Trophy Truck delayed due to technical problem
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The failure of the gear box of the Chevrolet Trophy Truck caused the loss of about twenty minutes in the timed section of the day. Fortunately, in the overall ranking, Eric Vigouroux and Alex Winocq maintain their seventh place.
"Tuesday day started badly, but finally, we got out of it well," explains Vigouroux. "10 kilometers from the finish (of the timed section), the gear box broke down. I should say that we demand lots from it since the beginning of the race, we use the engine brake to slow down. This gear box had already been used in the rally of Tunisia and the 24 Hours Off Road of Morocco. We have a limited stock of spare parts, and we optimize them as best as we can to make them last longer, so it is a fair wear and not a problem of reliability. "
"This special was even narrower than the ones preceding, this time, adding cliffs to them. It was really not made for us. When the gear box broke, we succeeded in reaching the third gear and we finished on a thread of gas, in slow motion". The Trophy Truck finished the special with the 27th time, 23 minutes from the first.
Fortunately, the timing after the special was large enough, and the two courageous mechanics of the team, Bernard and Eric, replaced the broken box by a new one in a rest area of the highway, without taking road penalties for the crew.
Tomorrow, during the third stage, Nador-er Rachidia, Eric and Alex hope to leave behind part of the time lost today. They will be measured in a 255 km timed section on typical tracks of the north of Morocco.
2010/06/10 | 12:34 CET | ARTICLE: MR/HS/URTUBIA
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