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 | SA-Dakar 2011: Australian Bruce Garland and Isuzu confirmed Dakar entry.
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With the confidence of an Isuzu D-Max racecar better than any others the team built and being able to raise the final round of sponsorship needed to run the event, the Australian Bruce Garland and the Isuzu Motorsports International Off-Road Race Team have confirmed their entry to the South America Dakar Rally 2011.
Garland and his Japanese navigator Harry Suzuki sent the all-new Dakar 201 Isuzu D-Max by ship to Buenos Aires on October 28 - along with all the tools and spare parts they will need for the grueling 9,000 plus kilometre event.
"It’s been touch and go as far as getting all the funding together," says Garland. "Because we’ve competed before, our entry was accepted some months ago but the final deadline to confirm or withdraw was upon us and we decided to bite the bullet and go. We're still short of sponsorship but we're thinking positive and we're confident we’ll have the resources we need by the time we line up at the start."
He added: "We'd like to thank our sponsors and fans for all their ongoing support and encouragement and hope they'll stick with us for the ride. We'll be aiming to better the 11th outright we posted in 2009 and win the production class again."
Garland's D-Max Pickup was built in Garland's Sydney workshop but is essentially a production-based vehicle. A key difference is in the specially race-tweaked 3.0-litre turbo diesel engine producing approximately 630Nm of maximum torque, around 192kW of peak power, which are increases of 75 and 60 per cent, respectively, on the standard D-Max engine.
2010/11/03 | 15:16 CET | EDITOR: MR/HS/GARLAND
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