2016 Dakar – Stage 2: Suzuki backed Santosh finishes 95th

The Dakar rally finally began at Stage 2 on 4th January 2015, after both the Prologue stage and stage 1 was cancelled. In the Prologue stage, an incident with an X-Raid Mini veering off the track into the spectator arena brought it to an untimely end and Stage 1 was cancelled due to harsh climatic conditions. However, even stage 2 was shortened from 510km to 387km for the cars and trucks; and from 410km to 354km for the bikes and quads categories.

The only Indian to be part of this insane rally, Bangalore-lad CS Santosh is trying to better his last year’s attempt, i.e. 36th position. However this time around, he has received support of the factory Suzuki racing team instead of being the privateer he was last time around. A shaky start to his current rally after struggling with issues of reliability and speed, Santosh currently stands 95th at the end of stage 2 of the rally. Currently 50 minutes off the leader, Santosh hopes to ascend from his current predicament in the following 11 stages.

KTM have yet to find a rival to their pace as their official rider Toby Price leads the bikes segment by 20 seconds, ahead of Ruben Faria on the Husqvarna; and 1 minute 28 seconds ahead of Stefan Svitko on the KTM as well. Alain Duclos, aboard the Sherco TVS trails the leader by 1 minute 51 seconds with another KTM rider – Matthias Walkner rounding off the top five 2 minutes off the pace. The Austrian bikes seem to have the upper-hand over the Honda contingent who occupy the next three spots with their pilots Goncalves, Barreda and Benevides in that very order. Pedrero Garcia of Sherco TVS and Quintanilla of KTM, bring the remaining top 10 positions.

After retiring from full-time competition rallying, nine-times world champion Sebastian Loeb makes his Dakar debut with the Peugeot Sport team. He leads the field at the end of the day with his teammate (and Mr. Dakar himself) – Stephane Peterhansel 2 minutes 23 seconds behind the Frenchman. The Peugeots are closely followed by Toyota’s Giniel de Villiers who is 3 minutes 1 second behind the leader. Another WRC fame-Dakar debutante Mikko Hirvonen ended the day in fourth with his Mini, ahead of the Toyotas’ of Leeroy Poulter and Vladimir Vasilyev. Dakar legend Cyril Despres has made a switch from two-wheels to four for the 2016 rally. He brought home his Peugeot in seventh with Bernhard Ten Brinke of Toyota, Nasser Al-Attiyah of Mini and Martin Prokop of Toyota following suit. Rallying legend Carlos Sainz ended in 14th, 11 minutes behind Loeb.

Stage 3 will run through the mountainous tracks between Tarmas Rio Hondo and Jujuy in North Argentina, with the special stages covering a total distance of 314km. The stage has specifically designed to allow the middle of the pack to hunt down the leaders. The torrential downpour in the region has made the terrain even harder than usual. It is quite possible that Stage 3 might also be trimmed, just like the previous stage.

Main pic credit: Vivek Mukherjee