#Dakar2015 - WHAT A DAY (Stage 2 - 5 Jan) To summarise the second stage of the #2015Dakar Rally - it was extremely hot and the route was tough! It was the longest racing stage - a gruelling 518 kilometres described like THIS in the Broadlink KTM release (see below) : A staggering 518 Km’s, the longest single special in the rally, proved to be a really tough day for most, with soaring temperatures of up to 42 degrees celcius. The stage started out with some some twisty mountain road stages, then the route turned into more sandy, desert kind of terrain. Some wide open roads followed with lots of dust, Riaan (van Niekerk) topped his 450 KTM out at 175 Km/h. It was absolutely flat out until refuel two. From there on the route was more challenging with lots of fesh-fesh, with ruts and narrow winding tracks between the bushes, then sandy whooped out sections of around 60 Km’s in total to the finish. It was a day of mixed results for the South African competitors as the Dakar Rally claimed its first SA victim: Team Rhide SAs Brian Baragwanath (quads)... Baragwanath suffered from flat tyres halfway through the stage and could unfortunately not continue after both rear tyres on his Yamaha Raptor 700 have disintegrated. He was forced to withdraw. After a long day in the saddle, his team-mate, Hannes Saaijman, reached the bivouac in 20th place in the quad category (he also suffered from two flat tyres, but carried spare tyres) - he has now moved to the 21st place in this category where 39 of the 45 quads are still on the results. Van Niekerk had a good day in the motorcycle category and finished the stage in 12th place. He is now 15th overall. The Zambian, David Reeve (KTM) finished the day in 48th and is now 48th overall while Albert Hintenaus (KTM) finished 68th to be in the 69th place overall. (We could not find Wessel Bosman on the results and will keep you posted with news about him.) In the CARS: Giniel de Villiers (Toyota Hilux) finished in an excellent second place (behind Nasser Al-Attiyah in the Mini who is now leading the race) - De Villiers/Von Zitzewitz has now moved to the second place overall. Their team-mates, Leeroy Poulter/Rob Howie was leading the stage earlier during the day, but experienced damper problems and had to settle for 12th place overall. This team is now 11th overall. Johan van Staden/Mike Lawrenson (Nissan Navara) finished the stage in 41st place and is now 41st overall. Now for Stage 3...
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 06:48:32 +0000
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