Com a quarta vitória em etapas no Rally Rota da Seda, que atravessa a Rússia, Casaquistão e Turcomenistão, a dupla da Volkswagen Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk ampliou a sua vantagem à geral para cerca de cinco minutos. Na etapa que ligou Turkmenbashi a Balkanabad e num total de 418 quilómetros Al-Attiyah alcançou o Race Touareg de Carlos Sainz / Lucas Cruz, que tinha começado à frente deles. Sete quilómetros antes de terminar Al-Attiyah foi vítima de um furo e chegou com o pneu furado, mas ainda assim conseguiu recuperar dois minutos. Mark Miller / Ralph Pitchford conquistaram o terceiro lugar numa etapa que atravessou o deserto Karakuma que começou com zonas rápidas, mas que depois se tornaram muito sinuosas e, assim, consolidaram seu terceiro lugar geral. Os vencedores do "Dakar" Giniel de Villiers / Dirk von Zitzewitz ocupam o quarto lugar.
Desde o início do rali em Kazan, na Rússia, os quatro Race Touareg da Volkswagen lideraram sempre a classificação geral. O duelo entre Al-Attiyah/Gottschalk e Sainz / Cruz para a vitória no Oriente está a entrar agora na fase final.
Kris Nissen (Volkswagen Motorsport Director)
"The four Volkswagen pairings again delivered a captivating fight for victory today. The performance of our four Race Touareg vehicles has been absolutely reliable in these tough competitive conditions, our service crew has been working flawlessly, and this gives us good reason to be very pleased. I’m confident that we’ll be able to successfully complete our ‘Dakar’ preparations at this rally.”
#100 – Giniel de Villiers (ZA), 4th place leg / 4th place overall
"In the first part we experienced rain in the desert – an extremely rare occurrence. Later, we encountered extremely bumpy terrain. After a jump we hit the ground hard, both rear tyres slipped off the rims and we had to change them. Because we had no additional spare wheels with us we drove very defensively. I don’t mind at all that we’ve got the chance here to sort out problems rather than having to do so at the ‘Dakar’.”
#101 – Carlos Sainz (E), 2nd place leg / 2nd place overall
"I’m pretty happy with our day. Being the first to go out is difficult and following others is a little easier – that’s nothing new. But we set a good pace and Lucas did a very good job of navigating. Even though Nasser and Timo have now got a comfortable advantage: The rally isn’t over yet and we’ll try and catch up with them all the way up to the end.”
#103 – Mark Miller (USA), 3rd place leg / 3rd place overall
"Today we really tried to be as quick as Nasser and Carlos, but we didn’t quite make it – we finished third again. Particularly in the beginning the leg was very fast and then became narrow and twisty towards the end. In the rough off-road sections our pace was good, that’s where we were able to make up ground.”
#104 – Nasser Al-Attiyah (Q), 1st place leg / 1st place overall
"Our plan worked out: We wanted to move up to Carlos and follow him in order to make up ground in the overall classification. We managed to do that really well, unfortunately, I hit a rock seven kilometres before the finish and we again had a puncture. We decided to finish the stage which cost us less time than a tyre change would have. Tomorrow, we’ll open the course – Carlos will then be chasing us again.”
Standings after Leg 07, Turkmenbashi (TM) – Balkanabad (TM)
345,00 km
Pos. Team, Vehicle, Leg 07, Total time
1 Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk (Q/D), Volkswagen Race Touareg 2, 3h24m36s (1), 20h43m20s
2 Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (E/E), Volkswagen Race Touareg 2, 3h26m36s (2), +4m56s
3 Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/ZA), Volkswagen Race Touareg 2, 3h31m57s (3), +22m03s
4 Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (ZA/D), Volkswagen Race Touareg 2, 3h36m04s (4), +28m44s
5 Ruslan Misikov/Konstantin Zhiltsov (RUS/RUS), Nissan, 4h12m37s (10), +4h13m06s
6 Ilya Kuznetsov/ Andrey Neshin (RUS/RUS), Mitsubishi, 4h07m35s (7), +4h49m20s
7 Maris Saukans/Didzis Zarnis (LV/LV), OSC, 4h11m11s (9) , +5h25m32s
8 Benediktas Vanagas/Saulius Jurgelenas (LT/LT), OSC, 4h03m22s (5), +5h45m46s
9 Alexey Berkut/Konstantin Meshcheryakov (RUS/RUS), Mitsubishi, 4h10m58s (8), +5h48m59s
10 Raz Heymann/Hillel Segal (ISR/ISR), Mitsubishi, 4h53m08s (13), +7h23m21s
Coming up next …
The route of the seventh leg will not lead to Darzawa as originally planned but across 624 kilometres (470 kilometres of special stage) back to Turkmenbashi and the Caspian Sea where the prime ministers of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan will send the rally participants off to the very short 15-kilometre special stage to Ashgabat on Sunday morning. The characteristics of the penultimate but crucial special stage can be described in simple terms: sand, sand and sand again.
