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2017 Dakar Rally

13 January 2017

2017 Dakar Rally – Stage 10: Chilecito – San Juan, 751 km

Al Rajhi returns to form with 4^th place stage finish
Terranova completes today’s stage in 5^th; now 6^thoverall
Garafulic now in 7^th place overall; Przygonski 8^th

Munich. After another cancelled leg of the route (Stage 9)
yesterday, racing resumed at the 2017 Dakar today as the competitors
departed from Chilecito to complete 751 more gruelling kilometres to
reach the Stage 10 end at San Juan. With just two more legs of the
race to go after today’s stage, all drivers are pushing hard to
achieve a strong overall finish. It was Yazeed Al Rajhi (KSA) and
co-driver Timo Gottschalk (DEU) in the #306 MINI John Cooper Works
Rally car that came to the fore today, challenging the frontrunners
and finishing 4^th in the stage.

Al Rajhi’s provisional overall place in the standings is now
31^st but this is subject to appeal after the Saudi driver
withdrew from the race in an earlier stage due to severe altitude
sickness. Having recovered, he is now attacking each stage with the
aim of climbing back up the eventual ranking.

Al Rajhi: “It was a good day for us. I tried to push hard and we got
4^th, which is good because we didn’t take any risks. The
track was very bumpy, a lot of river beds, it was offiste and a lot of
difficult roads.”

Just one place behind Al Rajhi in today’s stage was the #308 MINI
John Cooper Works Rally car of Orlando Terranova (ARG) and Andreas
Schulz (GER). The pair continued to show consistency with another
solid performance, securing 5^th in Stage 10 to move up
another place in the overall standings to 6^th.

Terranova: “Today’s stage was nice. It was very difficult navigation
and it was difficult to the find the way in the first river, but we
tried to push and the car worked perfect.”

Mikko Hirvonen (FIN) and Michel Perin (FRA), who have, to date, been
the most dominant of the MINI family in this year’s Dakar, faced a
difficult day in the #303 MINI John Cooper Works Rally. A collision
with a truck during today’s stage was just one of many difficulties
that saw the pair lose significant time, but they battled on, and
finished the stage in 37th to drop to 15th overall.

“A lot happened today,” said Hirvonen. “We got punctures, lost and
also stuck for an hour. After all that trouble we were following two
trucks, when one of the trucks passed the other. The slower one got in
his dust and went off. We were coming slowly but he was still halfway
on the road and we hit his rear. There was no real damage but we could
not reverse and the truck didn’t see us when he reversed – he doubled
our bonnet and broke the radiator. We were fixing that for like one
and half hour. Finally, we are here!”

Boris Garafulic (ARG) and co-driver Filipe Palmeiro (POR) were in the
first MINI ALL4 Racing car to finish the stage. The #314 car finished
11^th today to move up to 7^th place in the
overall standings.

Garafulic: “Today was good but it was demanding, very hard with a lot
of hills. It was a very long day, 42 degrees and 11 hours, so we
suffered a lot but it was good. Filipe was great today; he was a very
big part of the result in how hard he tried to not make any navigation
mistakes. So happy! ”

The next MINI to complete today’s challenge was the #322 MINI ALL4
RACING driven by Mohamed Abu Issa (QAT) with support from co-driver
Xavier Panseri (FRA).

Abu Issa: “The stage was very good; it was quite difficult. It was
very rocky in the beginning but we were trying to keep pace, it was
very dusty from the trucks too but overall it was not a bad day. The
second part of the stage was very fast and I think we did okay.”

Stephan Schott (GER) and Paulo Fiuza (POR) also completed Stage 10,
finishing in 17^th place to secure 16^th overall.

It was a difficult stage for Jakub Przygonski (POL) and Tom Colsoul
(BEL) in the #316 MINI ALL4 Racing car. Navigational difficulties saw
the pair finish the stage in 24^th place but they have
maintained a top ten place with 8^th position .0.

Sylvio de Barros (BR) and Rafael Capoani (BR) completed the stage in
29^th. They are now 19^th overall.

2017 Dakar Rally: MINI Family standings overall after Stage 10.

Position

Driver

Co-driver

Team

Time

Orlando Terranova
(ARG)

Andreas Schulz
(GER)

308

X-raid Team