• Tomorrow the crews will start into the crucial marathon stage
For the Monster Energy Rally Raid Teams, going easy on the cars represented the top priority, today. After all, the coming two days will bring the marathon stage where the drivers will have to survive the night without the support of their teams and without service. Therefore, the drivers opted for a particularly careful approach in the first section that was really gruelling for both man and machine. Later in the dunes, however, they made up for the lost ground. Nani Roma (ESP) and his French co-driver Michel Périn secured third place, Argentinean pairing Orlando Terranova and Bernardo ‘Ronnie’ Graue finished fifth and Poland’s Krzysztof Holowczyc and his French navigator Xavier Panseri took their MINI ALL4 Racing to eighth, on day six.
“Actually, the special stage wasn’t that bad. Only the beginning was no fun,” said Roma. “The dunes were nice but the sun was really high and so, I just couldn’t see if there were holes or other dangers.” He defended his eighth place in the first section but after the neutralisation, he really went for it and worked his way up and so, he will be the third to start into tomorrow’s stage. “The marathon stage definitely will be thrilling. Having to survive it without any service will be a kind of weird.”
Terranova also wasn’t happy with the first section. “Contesting the section before the neutralisation wasn’t nice. Extremely risky and the road book also wasn’t too good. But later, the driving was real fun,” revealed the Argentinean who will be the fifth to start into the marathon stage. “I trust in the MINI and if we are careful we will survive the two days very well.”
“At the beginning we were given a good shaking and that’s something I really dislike,” Holowczyc added. “But afterwards, there were several really nice technical sections – very fast. There, I had a lot of fun. The dunes were okay but we had a slow puncture and had to be careful to make sure that the tyre didn’t slip off the wheel. I think that I will have to drive somewhat faster, on the coming days. I could defend my position but I want to work my way further up.”
On the coming two days, however, he and the rest of the field will have to contest the marathon stage. Tomorrow, the crews will drive from Iquique to Uyuni and on Sunday vice versa. The night will be spent by the competitors without any service. On the way to Uyuni, the crews will have to contest a 321-kilometre special stage, on the way back, the special-stage distance adds up to 510 kilometres. Altogether, they will cover 1500 kilometres, on these two days.
