Puro Offroad

The AlgoDyne Green Power Racing Team duo of Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah and Swedish co-driver Tina Thörner clinched a stunning victory in the 2008 Baja Spain Aragon, round three of the FIA International Cup for Cross-Country Bajas, for the Trebur-based X-raid team. The Qatari was in complete control from the start of the demanding rally, held in high temperatures and dry, dusty conditions in the area around Zaragoza in Spain, and duly confirmed his third successive victory in the prestigious FIA Baja series at the wheel of a BMW X3 CC. His winning margin over Spanish runner-up Joan Roma was an emphatic 9m 08s. The retirement of his main championship rival Boris Gadasin now means that Al-Attiyah takes an unofficial 23-point lead to the next round of the series in Hungary in August. X-raid Portugal’s Filipe Campos finished behind Roma in third place and X-raid Russia’s Leonid Novitskiy was a fine fourth. Argentina’s Orlando Terranova climbed back to eighth overall after lengthy delays on Friday in his BMW X3 CC and set the second fastest time on the sixth stage on Sunday.

“This was a major result for our team,” said a delighted X-raid’s team director Sven Quandt. “It has taken five years for us to achieve a convincing victory against Mitsubishi, but we have achieved that here. Nasser was in control on every stage and I was also impressed with Campos’s driving. Both their cars were fitted with the new suspension and we were delighted with the improvements. Al-Attiyah set the fastest time through the 5.42km Teruel super special stage on Thursday evening and headed into the first of Friday’s selective sections with a 2.3-second advantage over Spain’s Joan Roma. Filipe Campos set the fourth fastest time in his X-raid Portugal car, while X-raid drivers Terranova, Saby and Novitskiy were classified fifth, sixth and eighth. Moniz da Maia was 13th. The first 125.15km selective section on Friday morning took crews from Calamocha to Teruel and Al-Attiyah extended his overall lead over Roma to 36 seconds by taking the fastest time. Campos, Terranova and Saby were fourth, fifth and sixth and held similar places in the overall classification, although Saby withdrew from the event and announced his retirement from the sport at the end of the section.

On the third leg of the Rally dos Sertões in Brazil Volkswagen further extended its one-two lead. The South African Giniel de Villiers and his German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz in the Race Touareg clinched victory on the rally’s third leg as well. The American Mark Miller and his South African co-driver Ralph Pitchford in the second Race Touareg finished the 415-kilometre stage from Aruanã to Niquelandia in the north of the country in second place. Since the spectators stage on Tuesday, de Villiers/von Zitzewitz have had the overall lead, twelve minutes ahead of their team-mates Miller/Pitchford. The third-placed Mitsubishi driver Reinaldo Varela is already running behind them with a 45-minute gap.

The third leg featured picturesque passages through remote regions of the state of Goias. For the first time in the history of the Rally dos Sertões, the contenders crossed this part of Brazil. In addition to flat and fast sections, the route also went through hilly areas. With the numerous jumps on the stony, rough terrain, a perfect suspension setup was the key to success. Read the rest of this entry »

René Metge, three-time winner of the Dakar Rally and icon of French motor sports, has created a totally new endurance race for motor sports enthusiasts: the Transorientale Rally. The rally raid, hailed as the biggest car race in the world, will start on June 12, 2008 from St. Petersburg in Russia and end on July 28 in Beijing at the foot of the Great Wall.

Five types of road vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, four-wheelers and trucks are allowed to take part in the race which will for the first time also feature a relay category that allows several people to take turns driving one vehicle.

The basic principle of the marathon rally raid is simple: to drive the 10,000-km journey between St. Petersburg and Beijing, via Kazakhstan, Read the rest of this entry »