Difficult second day in Africa Race for Petronas Team De Rooy Iveco
The second stage of the Africa Eco Race, with a special of 443 kilometres from Dar Kaoura to Agdal, was a beautiful, but also tough day in which both Petronas Team De Rooy Iveco trucks had a hard time. A broken shock absorber cost Gerard de Rooy an hour of loss of time. Wuf van Ginkel even had to leave the special stage and drive via the road to the bivouac at Foum Zguid.
“The first part of the special we were at rocket speed”, opens Gerard de Rooy. In no time he had overtaken the buggy that had started ahead of him, in the dunes of Erg Chebbi, and the first bikers. De Rooy closed in on Vladimir Vasilyev’s Mini.
But then things went wrong. On a fast stretch, where the cars and buggies were in favor of the truck, De Rooy got into trouble with one of the brakes. “One of the shock absorbers appeared to be broken. We had to dismantle it, which took a lot of time. Then we had to stop two more times to secure everything again. Because of that broken shock absorber, one of the brakes was broken too. With only three of four brakes through the dunes and some bad stretches with lots of stones; that doesn’t help.”
De Rooy was disappointed by the result, because he had liked the special. De Rooy finished in ninth time overall (trucks, cars, motorcycles) at 1.05.46 from Vasilyev. In the combined standings of cars and trucks he is now seventh at 1.11.11 of the Russian.
Wuf van Ginkel had to stop a number of times before he drove his truck out of the special stage to continue by road. According to the first reports, Van Ginkel has a broken steering system and three broken tires.
