The Dakar Has Come to First Dunes, Pascal Fights Tyre-Trouble
12.1.2016
The Dakar Rally participants got a taste of the sand dunes for the first time this year, starting the second half of the world’s toughest rally following the one-day break. Stage eight on Monday opened the concluding week of the famous competition. This time neither Pascal de Baar managed to stay out of trouble. The pilot of the north-Bohemian Renault Trucks special had to change a tyre. Eventually, he crossed the finish line on sixteenth place.
The Monday stage from Salta to Belén, consisting of seven hundred and sixty kilometres, was broken down to two timed sections. The special section included almost four hundred kilometres, during which the crews experienced sand dunes for the first time. During the SS the pilots were driving in an altitude between two and three thousand metres the entire time. This time the terrain did well to the Dutch pilot Gerárd de Rooy. His fellow countryman representing the Mammoet Rallysport team Pascal de Baar needed almost five and half hours to tackle the stage. He arrived at the finish on sixteenth place forty-five minutes after the winner. Already at the beginning he had to deal with a punched tyre, which the crew had to replace. Unfortunately, this resulted in Pascal’s drop to the very bottom of the starting field. He passed the first checkpoint on forty-fourth position. “Starting out with technical issues like this is always very unpleasant. Although Pascal lost a little over twenty minutes, he immediately fell in behind the slower competitors and taking them over in this terrain takes huge amount of time and an unnecessary collision can happen during the manoeuvres. Howver, Pascal managed to catch up with the rest great,“ praised Mario Kress the pilot, constructor of his racing special.
In the end, de Baar made it to the above mentioned sixteenth place in stage eight. In the overall ranking he lost a little, dropping to thirteenth position. The top position is occupied by the former Dakar winner Gérard de Rooy. Second in the ranking, his fellow Dutch Versluis, is losing six and half minutes at the moment. De Baar is currently two hours behind the leader.
The crews have five last stages to go. Episode nine on Tuesday is the shortest one this year, starting and finishing in Belén. Thanks to this there will be a minimum of linking sections. Out of the total nearly four hundred kilometres two hundred and eighty-five consist the special section.
