Volkswagen has maintained the lead with the Race Touareg 3 on the fifth leg of the Dakar Rally.
In the overall standings Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (E/E) remain the front runners with an advantage of 2m 26s after the 459-kilometre leg in the north of Chile from Calama to Iquique. The stage win was secured for the first time by X-raid BMW driver Stéphane Peterhansel in front of the two Volkswagen drivers Nasser Al-Attiyah (Q) and Sainz. The Frenchman thus bumped Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk (Q/D) from second to third place overall in the rally’s standings – a mere seven seconds separate the two duos.

As the winner of the previous day, Carlos Sainz had the difficult task of opening the leg and to leave the trails for his rivals to follow. Sainz was initially leading and then Peterhansel took the place at the front. The Frenchman extended his advantage up to 3m 45s some of the time. In the second half of the special with its extreme differences in altitude of more than 3,000 metres at the start down to sea level on the Pacific coast at the finish Al-Attiyah and Sainz made up ground again though. The gaps between the three drivers kept changing from one check point to the other by full minutes – the stage result remained open up to the finish. In the end Al-Attiyah/Gottschalk arrived 1m 24s behind stage winner Peterhansel. Sainz/Cruz were lacking 3m 15s to Peterhansel. Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (ZA/D) in another Race Touareg 3 reached the bivouac in fourth place, thus retaining fourth place overall. Their team-mates Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/ZA) followed by finishing the special in fifth place and improved by three places to position seven overall. At the end of the stage the drivers thrilled the fans with a spectacular 2,300-metre descent from a steep, 700-metre high dune – the famous Cerra Dragón – directly into the bivouac. On the near-32-degree steep downhill drive to the finish the cars achieved a speed of up to 220 km/h.

Number of the day
A large selection for the Volkswagen engineers: Every damper of the Race Touareg 3 developed jointly with technology partner ZF Sachs can be adjusted in 65,536 different set-up variants, so-called characteristics combinations.

Coming up next …
Friday, 07 January: The picture that characterises the sixth leg of the Dakar Rally for the participants is dominated by a barren desert landscape and poses a true challenge to the co-drivers. Plenty of off-road navigation using the roadbook and GPS through an uninhabited region with only few orientation points plus branching off mountain trails put the navigators to the test.


Three questions for Rainer Fleischmann, Head of the Electrical Systems Department http://www.volkswagen-motorsport.com...st=538&id=4222

Quotes after leg 5 http://www.volkswagen-motorsport.com...st=538&id=4223