Jubilee success along the Silk Road: Volkswagen factory driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and his co-driver Timo Gottschalk (Q/D) clinched their first stage victory on the second leg of the Silk Way Rally and took the overall lead. Their exploit marks the 100th stage win of the Race Touareg powered by a TDI engine which has participated in 26 competitions since its debut in 2004, winning every second stage and clinching eleven overall wins in the process. Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (E/E), Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/ZA) and Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (ZA/D) in places two, three and four completed Volkswagen’s 1-2-3-4 win of today’s leg. The second leg took the teams from Kazan, the capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, along the “new” Silk Road across 478 kilometres to Bougourouslan. The motorway connection between Eastern Europe and Asia, which is currently under construction, formed part of the special stage.

#100 – Giniel de Villiers (ZA), 4th place leg / 4th place overall “Right at the start of the special stage we hit the ground hard in a dip and afterwards we experienced some slight misfiring and no longer had full engine power. Shortly after that, we missed a branch-off and Carlos was able to pass us. The rally is still long and anything’s possible even though we did lose a little more time than we’d have liked to.”

#101 – Carlos Sainz (E), 2nd place leg / 2nd place overall
“The route leads alongside and across the construction site of the new motorway. Long, quick sections on the gravel bed alternated with many branch-offs in the surrounding fields. After passing Giniel we had to open the leg – this was not an easy feat but, on the whole, it was good in order to find our rhythm.”
#103 – Mark Miller (USA), 3rd place leg / 3rd place overall
“For my co-driver Ralph and me the crucial thing in the beginning was to get used to working together again. The leg featured more tasks for the navigator than for the drivers because two or three branch-offs were difficult to identify. In terms of driving, it was a moderate challenge as we were often running straight ahead at high speed.”
#104 – Nasser Al-Attiyah (Q), 1st place leg / 1st place overall
“Of course I’m really happy about our stage win. The leg strongly resembled a World Rally Championship round as we were mostly running on paved roads and gravel stretches. Our reward for today is being allowed to open the course on tomorrow’s leg – that’s why we’ll continue to act with due caution.”

Interim standings after Leg 02, Kazan (RUS) – Bougouruslan (RUS) 141.24 km/478.6 km SS 02/total

• 1 Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk (Q/D) Volkswagen Race Touareg 2 1h 10m 15s 1h 10m 15s
• 2 Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (E/E) Volkswagen Race Touareg 2 1h 13m 08s + 2m 53s
• 3 Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/ZA) Volkswagen Race Touareg 2 1h 14m 35s + 4m 20s
• 4 Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (ZA/D) Volkswagen Race Touareg 2 1h 17m 18s + 7m 03s
• 5 Christian Lavieille/Jean-Michel Polato (F/F) Nissan 1h 19m 34s + 9m 19s
• 6 Alexey Berkut/Konstantin Meshcheryakov (RUS/RUS) Mitsubishi 1h 19m 59s + 9m 44s
• 7 Bernard Errandonea/Jean-Pierre Garcin (F/F) SMG 1h 20m 18s + 10m 03s
• 8 Matthias Kahle/Thomas Schuenemann (D/D) Honda 1h 21m 30s + 11m 15s
• 9 Andrey Biryukov/Dmitri Kniga (RUS/BY) Mitsubishi 1h 26m 54s + 16m 39s
• 10 Ruslan Misikov/Konstantin Zhiltsov (RUS/RUS) Nissan 1h 27m 20s + 17m 05s

Press release Volkswagen Motorsport – Puro Off Road is registered news user with Volkswagen Motorsport and Volkswagen of America

Related posts:

1. Sainz wins prime leg of Silk Way Rally
2. Most difficult stage of the rally
3. One-two-three victory for Volkswagen
4. Triple lead maintained by VW
5. Volkswagen continues leading the Dakar Rally

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This post was written by Memin