VW Race Touareg 2

Dakar Rally 2009 - Leg 6

Thursday, 8th January: San Rafael > Mendoza

• Link section: 76 km
• Special stage: 395 km
• Link section: 154 km
• Total: 625 km

This day once again features numerous traverses as the drivers have to cover some 60 kilometres of dune terrain, at the beginning of the special stage. The second half of the special stage provides a more accessible track but a wide fort might temporarily slow the competitors down. To avoid an extensive bath, the drivers will need all their driving skills. With the arrival at Mendoza, the rally enters the foothills of the Andes mountain range.

At first, it seemed as if BMW X3 driver Nasser Al Attiyah had won the sixth leg of the first Dakar Rally on South American soil, thus defending his lead in the overall standings – but then, the battle for the lead came to a completely different end.

BMW-Pilot Nasser Al Attiyah, the overall leader of the Dakar Rally, was excluded from the event. Following the sixth leg, the organisers disqualified the driver from Qatar racing for the German X-Raid-Team for having missed too many waypoints.

According to the regulations, missing up to four of the so-called way points is penalised with time-penalties. Should a team miss more than four waypoints, it has to be disqualified with immediate effect.

Nasser Al Attiyah (BMW): “Yesterday, we had to stop in the dunes as our radiator came close to boiling over. I stopped for seven minutes, opened the radiator head and even burnt my finger while doing so. Following a break we could continue and achieved an impressive result, in the end. Today, we again encountered this problem in the opening stages of the leg, with the engine temperature rising to more than 130° C. As we certainly would have stranded in the dunes, Tina and I opted for driving straight to CP1.”

“Consequently, we failed to pass some of the way points. From CP1, we completed the special stage as scheduled. I knew that we would receive a time-penalty but had I continued driving on the fine sand of the dunes with the overheated engine, I definitely would have been forced into retirement due to a blown engine. I’m really sorry for the team but Tina and I didn’t know that missing too many waypoints would result in our disqualification.”

Mitsubishi also encountered a disastrous day. Luc Alphand had to retire just a few kilometres after the start. During a breakdown, his co-driver Gilles Picard complained about serious nausea and was taken to the bivouac as a precaution. During a check-up, the doctors didn’t detect any serious health problems and he was given the all-clear. Team-mate Hiroshi Masuoka had been forced into retirement by technical problems as early as following leg one.

Stephane Peterhansel (Mitsubishi) who has won the Dakar car ranking three times, received a 15-minute time-penalty for having missed a checkpoint and dropped back to sixth position in the overall standings.

Leg 7 »