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| The KTM of French rider Phillepe Cavelius was one of the early victims to the brine. |
OF the five South African riders who started the Dakar last
weekend, only two are still in the race — solo-rider Albert Hintehaus on his
KTM, and Willem Saaijman on his Yamaha Raptor quad.
Both riders are in the rear, just aiming to finish. Before
yesterday’s marathon 451 km race, they had to strip and clean their bikes from
the frames up after Monday’s Stage 8, which was a marathon mud bath over salt
pans that had received 15 cm of rain overnight.
The muddy brine knocked out most of the top riders in the Dakar,
including South Africa’s Riaan Van Niekerk, riding for KTM Broadlink.
Van Niekerk’s Dakar ended at Kilometer 365 after he got salt into
the airbox. By then the brine had worked its way into the electrical systems and
radiators of all the bikes, most of which had to be push-started at the first
refuel.
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| Giniel de Villiers Dirk von Zitzewitz, |
Race leader Joan Barreda lost three hours to electric issues, allowing
Marc Coma to regain the lead.
Among the cars, first placed Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah is
leading Imperial Toyota’s Giniel de Villiers by about 20 seconds overall.
Al-Attiyah yesterday said he needed 30 minutes with an oxygen face
mask to recover from the altitude sickness he had suffered during the high
stages in Bolivia on Monday.
“I vomited three times and Matthieu [Baumel] asked me to stop. But
no, I didn’t want to lose any time.
“I wasn’t able to eat anything yesterday, I only had a soup and a
cup of green tea,” said the champion racer who went on to finished fastest
despite losing a wheel.
Today’s racing sees different special stages for the riders (371
km) and drivers (359 km) but both groups first have to stay awake over five
hours of low-speed liaison sections.
The navigators will have to be especially sharp on these slow
sections to ensure the drivers don’t exceed the speed limits by as much as a
kilometre or — worse — fall asleep.
By now everyone is fatigued after 11 days of endurance racing and
at this point of the Dakar, a slide into tree on a tar road is as likely to end
a race as a mechanical failure in the desert.
