Shortcut Dakar

12 January 2017

As the ninth stage of the rally Dakar-2017 was cancelled due to a huge landslide, the sportsmen can relax, and we can talk about the racers and their impressions of the Dakar-2017.

Dakar director Etienne Lavigne commented on the cancellation of the stage after a rockslide for Motorsport.com. The race organizers said that the event was lending its resources to the nearby village of Volcan, which had been badly affected by the storms. Lavigne said providing humanitarian assistance was more important than ensuring the rally ran exactly to schedule, but promised organisers will do everything possible to run the final stages as planned. "It's really sad for us, but when you see the circumstances that happened to that village, I'm not sure that the sporting aspect is the most important," Lavigne told reporters on Tuesday. "Nine years now we have come to Argentina. We were aware of these conditions, there was just this year the phenomenon of very violent weather. In front of this, we can't do much. We succeeded at running all the other stages in good conditions, now the most important is this catastrophe. He added, "A good organisation is an organisation that adapts successfully, that is not paralysed. We will do all we can to make Dakar 2017 continue."

Czech driver Ales Loprais said how the Dakar rally-marathon was unfolding for him. At the moment, TATRA's pilot is 11th in the overall standings after the problems in the first half of the race. "So, it's the second part of the Dakar. The first part turned out to be unsuccessful for us, but we hope that now everything will be better, the more especially as our truck is running better. We are already close to the top ten. It would be nice if the rest of the stages were not reduced: we need as long stages as possible to win back much time," Loprais told in an interview to Championat.com.

Belarusian pilot of MAZ-SPORTavto Sergey Vyazovich commented on the results of the eighth stage. "We are satisfied with the results. Alexander Vasilevsky confidently entered the top ten, and now our task is to maintain and, if possible, to improve his position. Unfortunately, the organizers cancel stages and shorten scratches. On the one hand, this is an issue of security that above all else, on the other hand, we all are ready for serious challenges and spartan conditions. If the opportunity arises, we will by all means try to reduce the gap to the leaders," Vyazovich told to BelTA news agency.

Dutch IVECO driver Gerard de Roy in an interview to Championat.com told how the eighth stage of Dakar-2017 was unfolding for him. He finished this stage ninth and is now third in the overall standings behind Dmitry Sotnikov and Eduard Nikolaev fr om KAMAZ-master. "The stage was good, it was a nice scratch. But halfway we had a puncture and had to change the wheel. We lost seven or eight minutes. I liked the stage all the way, but it's a pity that we have lost so much time. Then there was a big mess on a liaison, we had to reach the bivouac along another, longer road," said de Rooy.

Russian quad racer Sergey Karyakin commented on the eighthh stage of the rally marathon. "Yesterday was a heavy day, I was driving my quad for 19 hours. There were technical troubles - a burnt ignition coil, a punched wheel. The road was washed away, and all racing cars, quads, motorcycles, assistance cars drove through the mountains, and, of course, and at an inopportune moment we faced a problem - the assistance truck came late to the fleet. Today, the special stage was canceled, because no one had time to come, and it was impossible to prepare the equipment without support. It's raining, now we have to travel 650 km to the next bivouac. I hope tomorrow it will be hot, I'm very tired of the cold, eternal rain, it's good that I feel better. The remaining 3 days of racing are left: two long and one short. We should give a good account of ourselves and push the matter through. We are bound to be successful!" he wrote at VKontakte. 

Peugeot's pilot Sebastien Loeb made a comment on his victory at the eighth stage of the Dakar-2017 in the quad category. "I feel ok. For sure, I tried really hard, because today was a stage like the ones I like, with some fast roads, whereas tomorrow is more desert-like with dunes. I wanted to try to make a gap today, but finally I had a puncture on the last part of the stage, so I lost a few minutes to change the wheel, but, it's ok - it's still the best time. It's not bad and we are still in the fight. At the moment the fight seems to be between me and Stéphane, but I think the two next days will be very, very tough and anything can happen there, so we will see. We'll try to continue to work well and we'll see wh ere we are. Tomorrow will be a hard job. Daniel has a lot of work to do tonight to try and prepare as well as possible and as for myself, I will do my best", Loeb was quoted by the official Dakar website. 

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