The Volkswagen drivers went into the rest day of this year’s Dakar Rally with a 1-2-3-4 win. After the victories in the first week the score in the duel with the X-raid BMW team is now 5-1 to Volkswagen.

After six legs through Argentina and Chile Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (E/E) are leading by 2m 42s in front of their team colleagues Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk (Q/D). After 1,925 of the 5,020 kilometres against the clock Stéphane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret (F/F) in the X-raid BMW are Volkswagen’s fiercest rivals. Their gap amounts to 14m 51s – a time as short as the blink of an eye at the Dakar Rally. Four out of six possible stage wins so far went to Sainz/Cruz and one each to Al-Attiyah/Gottschalk and Peterhansel/Cottret. The leading trio is followed within a striking distance by two other Volkswagen factory duos: Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (ZA/D) in fourth and Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/ZA) in sixth place overall.

Yet the rest day of the "Dakar” is anything but a day for lazing around. The mechanics intensively prepare the vehicles for the second week of the "Dakar”. After the joint press conference the drivers, co-drivers and team management will present the Volkswagen bivouac to Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera and subsequently be available to the media for interviews.

The first rally week offered the "Dakar” participants the variety which is typical for South America. The terrain changed several times a day between gravel passages, scree fields, solid clay soil, jungle sections and soft dune sand. On the sixth leg the Volkswagen drivers definitely earned their day of rest, which gives them the first chance to recuperate since the rally started on New Year’s Day in Buenos Aires. Plenty of the powder-like sand that is called "guadal” in the national language (and is similar to Africa’s fesh fesh) made this leg a particularly gruelling endeavour for "man and material”. The Volkswagen duos finished this stage with a 1-2-3-4 victory.

The second half of the Dakar Rally will start on Sunday and Monday like a thunderbolt. A total of 611 timed kilometres on the seventh and 508 on the eighth leg are on the agenda. The tasks are as varied as they were in the first part of the "Dakar”. Gravel, solid ground and lots of sand make sure that the participants will not suffer from boredom. The Dakar Rally ends on 15 January after the second crossing of the Andes and after thirteen legs when the teams arrive at the finish in Buenos Aires.

Number of the day
More than once around the globe: If the impellers of the turbocharger compressors in Carlos Sainz’ Race Touareg 3 were made to revolve as many times as they have on the special stages up to the rest day, the total number of revolutions would amount to a distance of 53,668 kilometres. This equates to about 1.34 times the circumference of the earth.


Rest day quotes http://www.volkswagen-motorsport.com...st=538&id=4233