South Africa’s Giniel de Villiers was positive despite setbacks that came his way at the Dakar Rally.
SOUTH Africa’s Giniel de Villiers was positive despite setbacks that came his way at the Dakar Rally.
The Tayota Gazoo driver suffered two punctures on Tuesday during stage 9 of the race, this after he had four punctures on Monday.
De Villiers said that Tuesday’s stage proved to be a tricky one having to traverse over rocks and navigate canyons with punctures.
“It was quite a difficult stage, many rocks, many valleys to negotiate with, we had two punctures unfortunately but we know we have a serious problem with the tyres and in the morning we were sitting in the dust for about 100 kilometers because we were in 16th position after we had four punctures yesterday but after today I said I am going to drive really slowly just to make sure I get to the finish but at least we are now in the top five.”
Despite the recent hardships de Villiers was able to win stage five of this years race and will be hoping things turn in his favour for tomorrow’s stage from Neom to AlUla.
Meanwhile, overall leader Stephane Peterhansel won the stage and left his rival Nasser Al-Attiyah trailing behind.
Peterhansel stretched his advantage over the Qatari to 17 minutes and 50 seconds with three stages remaining.
