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 | SA-Dakar Rally: Van Loon / Scholtalbers now the best Mitsubishi with 10th ov.
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After more then the half of the Dakar Rally 2012, the "big surprise" seems like it don´t work - where are all the Mitsubishi´s? After Stage 8 only one Racing Lancer is in the overall Top 10 - Erik van Loon and Harmen Scholtalbers from Holland. With 22:23:19 hours they are still 02:19:04 hours behind the overall leader Stéphane Peterhansel.
"Monday it was impossible, not to hit any rocks. It was like Russian Roulette" said Van Loon after SS08. "It was not the best Dakar-stage. Just straight forward, full speed and with every stone the tyres were destroyed more and more. After all we had three flat tyres - the last 2.5 kilometers before the finish line."
Yesterday he lost some time driving behind the truck-winner Ales Loprais. "We followed him a long time and pushed the Sentinel again and again. This means ´Ì´m faster then you, please go sideways´. We lost a lot of time behind him. I was constantly on the brakes or had to stop because of the dust. Later I asked Loprais and he answered, that there was no space to go sideways. A bit of a gossip story" he laughed.
Also the Riwald Mitsubishi crews had their problem with the dust. "Poor visibility, driving on feeling and watch out when you want to catch up. Because ´overtaking´ was the goal of Gert Huzink and Bernhard ten Brinke. With success" the Team reported. "Bernhard ten Brink was belting two tyres - in addition, her broke a rim complete in twos, so no, they are not satisfied. But on a 12th place, which is nice of course, you keep wonder where we could finish."
Bernhard ten Brinke said: "Well, we’ve softened the suspensions, but today again two flats, apparently that was not the solution. The car with number 314 is just come back on the bivouac so you men of Wevers Sport can fix it. Now what we are going to do is resist the break balance, so we will see tuesday if it has helped."
So, best Mitsubishi in the overall rankings is still Erik van Loon as 10th, followed by Ten Brinke/Baumel (12th, +03:03:22), Huzink/Decre (16th, +03:50:47) - all cars are Racing Lancers. Best "non-Lancer" ist the Ukrainian-French crew Nesterchuk/Lichtleuchter with their L200 Strakar as 25th (+07:26:29).
2012/01/10 | 17:30 CET | ARTICLE: MR/SY/HS
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