Stage Ten Race Analysis

January 15, 2007

by Ryan Arciero

Man oh man how things can change in just one stage of the Dakar Rally. Volkswagen was sitting as kings of the mountain until today. Both Ginel and Carlos end up having problems that end their chances at an overall win for this year’s race. Ginel had an engine failure and Carlos had an electrical issue and it cost both of them the rally today.

After yesterday being a marathon stage, it made it even more difficult today to make sure you go the car to service with all your equipment working. As I said in yesterday’s post I was expecting another shake up in the overall, I just didn’t expect for it to be VW.

Mark on the other hand did his job perfectly. He came across Ginel first and tried to assist him but he flagged him on because there was nothing Mark was going to be able to do to help. Then Mark came up on Carlos and tried to help out with his electrical issues only to have no luck in figuring out the problem. Mark finished today’s stage in 10th at a little over 30 minutes behind. Not too bad especially for the time that was wasted on helping his teammates. Carlos on the other hand dropped to almost seven hours back on today’s stage and dropped to 10th overall. Not a good day at all for VW.

The bright part for those of us that are rooting for Mark is that now Mark is back in the driver’s seat as the lead on the VW team and the hope for a possible top three finish. Mark will no longer be the water carrier for his teammates, they will now become his. Mark now sits sixth overall, one minute out of fifth, twelve minutes out of fourth and almost forty-nine minutes out of third. His time to third is very achievable especially with the stages that are ahead leading into Mali. Look for Mark if all goes as planned to move up a possible one or even two more spots at the end of tomorrows run. If Mark runs like I know he can I even look for a stage win in the next few days.

Mitsubishi is now in control of this rally by almost an hour and a half, so that means they will be very careful in their driving styles and do what ever they can to save their equipment. All we can hope at this point is for some good time eating mechanical failures or even driver errors on their part. In my opinion Mark has got to drive an aggressive pace and start putting the pressure back on Mitsubishi for the overall. Stage wins will do that because he will then start to eat into their time gap.

As we saw today this rally is far from over and who knows maybe Mitsubishi will have bad luck leading into the next few days like VW did today. Anything is possible in the Dakar. You never underestimate anything this rally throws at you. Like I said in the beginning of these posts, I am sure Kris Nissen would trade all the stage wins in if VW was still in the overall lead and ready to win this race.

Well onto Stage 10 and once again let’s keep our fingers crossed that Mark pulls out some impressive driving with no mistakes and wins his first stage of the Dakar.