X-Raid takes four of the top five spots
Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret in their X-Raid Mini ALL4 Racing won the 2013 Dakar with a 42-minute lead over their closest competitors, Giniel de Villiers and Dirk Von Zitzewitz in their Toyota Hilux. It was the duo’s second consecutive Dakar win, and was Peterhansel’s eleventh Dakar victory, including six wins on bikes and five in cars.
The rally, which began On January 5 in Lima, Peru, finished in Santiago, Chile after fifteen days and fourteen stages of competition. Peterhansel had driven cautiously over the last few days of the rally to protect his lead; he finished tenth on the final stage.
His teammates Nani Roma and Michel Périn won the stage, with X-Raid BMW X3 runners Orlando Terranova and Paulo Fiúza finishing second.
X-Raid’s Leonid Novitskiy and Konstantin Zhiltsov finished third in the final standings in their Mini, with Roma and Périn fourth and Terranova and Fiúza fifth.
Peterhansel said afterward, “A race is never won from the beginning. The team did a cracking job. We never stopped, we never had a mechanical. We only had to drive as fast as we could. On the other hand, my co-driver Jean-Paul did an amazing job navigating. We never had to ease up. We always maintained a high pace, apart from the last couple of days, when we started dosing our efforts.
“This is the first time since I started racing in cars that we've finished a race without a single mechanical problem. This is the best car I've ever driven. It wasn't an easy victory, because we knew the buggies would be fast. But this situation enabled me to focus from the start of the race. I attacked to open up a gap between me and my rivals. It's still a strong flavor because we've got a whole team behind us. Sven Quandt has been involved in the Dakar for over a decade and he'll be sharing in this win together with everyone who works with us.”
The car class was one of four in the Dakar; the others were bikes, quads, and trucks. Cyril Despres won the bike class on his Red Bull Rally Team KTM. Complete event results for all classes are posted here. —Brian S. Morgan
