Another beautiful stage race result and silver for the crew number 503 and for the Princess 69
From the morning the racers and their accompaniment went up to the Andes. Yesterday they got up to an altitude of almost 5000 meters above sea level, where id the Argentina’s highest mountain pass.
The 7th stage: Calama – Salta
Friday 11 January 2013
The connecting section: 534 km
The speed trial: 220 km
The measured section went a bit lower but the altitude was between 3400 and 3900 meters above sea level. It was a very fast race. In these altitudes is sparsely air, which means less power. Temperatures are around 15 degrees.
Sandy and stony ground with the Andes in the background that was beautiful scenery of the 220 km long speed trial. The stage was all the time headed by De Rooy from the Netherland. Right behind him was our crew number 503 – Aleš, Serge and Radim. In one of the most balanced stage won De Rooy but right behind him finished Aleš with the loss of only one minute and nine seconds. Members of the InstaForex Loprais Team went very quickly, even team in the background weren’t discouraged by the loss in the fifth stage (as you could see in the yesterday’s video). We drive our race and fight. On the third place were Karginov (Kamaz), Versluis (MAN) and Biasion (IVECO). In the overall ranking has nothing changes, we remain on the sixth place. Once again we reduced the time difference to the best driver and those minutes might be very useful in the future.
Unfortunately, the stage showed its worst side. The French motorcycle driver Thomas Bourgin with number 106 was hit by a car and this caused his death. During his way to the start of the speed trial, he had a collision with the police car driving in opposite way. He payed Dakar the highest possible price, lets honor his memory.
During the editing of this article we got hot news from our colleague and member of team, Martin Klimánek: “Todays stage was not difficult only for the drivers, but also for the accompaniment. The route was but, but full of rocks, so it was the biggest problem for the tiers, but only for them. For the assistance cars meant this crossing into bivouac about 700 km. We had to drive trough the Ands. We were at 4950 meters above sea level, which caused out troubles with breathing and also the engines of the automobiles and trucks had some troubles.The steep ascent and descent made many troubles to the assistance cars, because not only their engines got overheating, but also their breaks. This caused their late arrivals into the bivouac, where were the drivers waiting already. The next stage had to be canceled because of that, the cars are arriving even now, late in the night.”
So todays 8th stage Salta - San Miguel was canceled!
Mostly silent Radim Pustějovský did also comment the stage:” You can only watch the tires and you will imagine, how difficult was this stage. Firstly it was pretty fast on the earth way and then it got all crazy.The brakes were on fire in the finnish. But you can not do anything if you try to win, it has to be done this way!”
“Today I wanted to try our limits, so I drove on the edge... We wanted to with the stage, and even though it did not happen, we gave everything into it. Sometimes the brakes and tires were on fire. I was frustrated from the time we lost, so I wanted to drive as good as possible.” tells us Aleš Loprais about yesterday. “At last we heard the 8th stage was canceled. It is not good for us, because we need to drive and cut the time difference. I am not the type waiting for the others mistakes. I want to fight until the end.”
