Peterhansel won today's stage but he's still 2 hours away from the VW trio at the front due to yesterday's transmission damage. 99% chance the overall winner will be one of those three (Sainz, Miller, Al-Attiyah)
Sainz came in 2nd and extended his lead to about 15 min on Miller and Al-Attiyah.
Looking good!
On the sad news side, Italian rider Luca Manca crashed heavily today and is in very serious condition at hospital. I hope he can recover. :/
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE <div class='quotemain'>I'm not much of a Dakar buff, though I catch it when they cover it on Speed Channel. BTW, Does anybody know why Russians dominate the truck class?
This dude is timeless. It seems he will he never get old and retire? Geez, this dude has been winning .... since the 80s. (I'm sure you know his son is kicking ... in karting too).
Well there's just 2 manufacturers involved in making huge offroad racing trucks AFAIK, Kamaz (Russian) and Gimaz (Dutch) and since the trucks are not "really" racing the driver is not so important so they just take on local crew they trust.
Sainz has been around a long long time, actually he started as a squash player and I think he managed to be national champion in the early 80's, but I think he soon realized motorsports are way much more fun hehe, and I hope he can win at least one Dakar before he retires, rally drivers tend to be fast in Dakar, but being fast in Dakar is not enough to win. One of my fav drivers, he even supports Real Madrid (the way it should be!
) Too bad the way he lost the '98 championship, very dramatic with the finish line in sight the engine broke down.
His son has got some promising results in karting, but it's way to early to judge, at this point having a dad with money and a bunch of contacts in motorsport and sponsors helps a lot, we'll see when he's in higher level series how it goes. For now my 4 wheel pride and hope rests on Alonso (the hell will freeze over before Sordo beats Loeb and Alguersuari is there mostly cause his dad is rich and well conected)
