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Welcome to the Dakar Rally 2012 special newssection. To read an article just click on the specific headline below. All articles are visible for several years and under special subdomain [ COPY & CLICK HERE ] or use the SEARCH. |
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 | SA-Dakar 2012: Toyota Motorsport's Hilux pickups are due to leave this week.
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The new South African Toyota Motorsport team is shortly before leaving to South America. "South African Airlines" will fly the cars, together with four tons of spare parts and equipment, in one of its Airbus passenger jets to Buenos Aires in Argentina this week.
"It's been a wild ride already," said a relieved Rob Howie of Toyota Motorsport. "Once the official announcement was made at the Johannesburg International Motor Show early in October that Toyota Motorsport would contest the Dakar Rally, we've been flat-out preparing the pickups for this great adventure."
"In between, both pickups have competed in the final two rounds of the Absa South African Off-Road Championship and also participated in five days of testing in the sand dunes of the Namib Desert."
He added: "That was a major logistical exercise on its own. We had a final shakedown test near Bapsfontein on Wednesday of both Imperial Toyotas as well as a third Hilux we have built for an Argentine privateer. All three drivers, Giniel de Villiers, Duncan Vos and Lucio Alvarez, were on hand and successfully completed around 50 kilometres without any problems."
Howie is the co-driver for Duncon Vos and it will be their first Dakar Rally. Giniel De Villiers and co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz of Germany won the Dakar Rally in South America in 2009.
"We are mightily relieved that we've met the SAA deadline," continued Rob Howie. "The pressure has been huge throughout the nine weeks since the JIMS announcement and for the last four weeks we have been working 24/7 to achieve this. We've had to partially disassemble the vehicles so that they can fit on individual pallets in the passenger cargo hold of the SAA Airbus."
"We've also had to individually wrap all the larger spare components and pack hundreds of boxes of smaller spares and equipment for stowage in a container. Now we have a couple of weeks off to spend with our families over Christmas before we fly to Buenos Aires on 26 December."
The team will be reassembling the vehicles at Toyota Argentina's plant in Zarate, 100 kilometres north of Buenos Aires, before a pre-race test and shakedown at Toyota's 4x4 test track on 28 December. The following day the race vehicles will be transported the 450 kilometres to the Argentine coastal resort city of Mar del Plata, where they will be scrutineered on 31 December before the rally starts there on 1 January.
2011/12/12 | 14:01 CET | ARTICLE: MR/SY/TOYOTA
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