Vincent Thijs and Arjan van Tiel have taken their third consecutive stage win in the Fenix Rally. On the longest day of the rally, a 405.55-kilometre loop against the clock around Douz, they were 6 minutes and 35 seconds faster than Vincent Vroninks and Dave Berghmans. Across the entire field, only SSV leader Pierre Lafay was quicker. Among the bikes, Jeremy Knuiman was by far the fastest on the road, but a penalty of 13 minutes and 30 seconds for speeding left only 38 seconds of that lead. As a result, Justin Gerlach is once again the classification leader, 3 minutes and 17 seconds ahead of the Dutchman.
The stage ran over fast gravel tracks with smaller dunes, rough and broken trails, and plenty of ditches and riverbeds. For the first time, the Fenix Rally and the historic vehicles of Loasis followed the same route. Alongside the sporting battle, adjusted classifications also appeared. The stewards confirmed on Tuesday that a competitor who drops out receives not only the maximum time, but also the penalties for all missed checkpoints and waypoints, capped at the fixed penalty for not starting. The results of the first two stages have been revised accordingly. As a result, Monday’s retirements weigh more heavily than in the first provisional classifications. These are still provisional results.
Bikes: Knuiman fastest, Gerlach back on top
Knuiman completed the special in 06:02:12, making him 14 minutes and 8 seconds faster than Gerlach. After the speeding penalty was applied, he won the stage by 38 seconds. He gets to open the fourth stage as the first rider today. Gerlach, who started the morning with a 3-minute-and-54-second lead, is back at the top, but with a smaller margin. Daan Veenendaal finished third at 3 minutes and 48 seconds and remains third in the classification, at 33 minutes and 24 seconds. The fight for the win thus looks like a two-way battle between Gerlach and Knuiman.
Florian Willer finished fourth, despite a 17-minute speeding penalty. Gaspard Delsart finished fifth and remains fourth in the classification. Richard Wijntjes ended ninth and climbed to sixth place. Pascal de Baar finished twelfth, largely due to a 27-minute speeding penalty, and stands tenth. Austrian Georg Reinprecht and Algerian Mustapha Bouchneb did not start.
Among the quads, Adam Krysiak won again, with a 33-minute-and-59-second lead over Karol Slugocki. The Pole has thus nearly doubled his lead, to 01:09:49.
SSV: Lafay extends his lead
Lafay and Loïc Minaudier (Can-Am Maverick R) won their third stage in a row, in 05:23:06. The gap to the rest was large: Xavier and Diego Lormand finished second at 20 minutes and 50 seconds, just ahead of Adrien Leyreloup and Tom Fauconnet. Belgians Hans den Ouden and Dirk Goris of Art of Speed finished fourth, ahead of Frédéric Henricy and Eric Bersey. Nicolas Martinez and Lili Delfino lost a good half hour in eleventh, which means Lafay now leads the classification by 51 minutes and 47 seconds. David and Laura Bord are third, followed by the Lormands and Riccardo Benettolo and Martina Musiari.
Hugues Lacam and Delphine Delfino, who retired on Monday, stood still for almost three quarters of an hour in the first part of the special. They did finish the stage, however, and ended twentieth. Raoul Fenestraz and Lili-May Mansuy lost a lot of time and dropped from fifth to seventeenth place.
For Belgium’s Art of Speed, it was a day of extremes. Peter Goossens and Geoffroy Noel de Burlin crashed on the track. Both were unharmed, although Goossens stopped by the clinic as a precaution, but the damage to their Can-Am is too great to continue. Patrick Hillewaere and Jeff Melkert drove with a broken wheel hub. Their assistance crew picked up two flat tyres of their own along the way, after which a Tunisian came to the rescue with spare wheels. Once repaired, they were able to continue; the team also thanked Feryn Dakar Sport for the help.
Cars: Thijs and Van Tiel untouchable, bad luck for Wauters
Thijs and Van Tiel completed the special in 05:30:15, 7 minutes and 9 seconds slower than Lafay, but faster than all other competitors. According to Van Tiel, they had “driven all the way to the front” within a hundred kilometres. On the final hundred kilometres, the tricky navigation cost some time, and along the way they lost around ten more minutes to a flat tyre and a tyre that was slowly deflating. In the classification, they now lead by 27 minutes and 7 seconds over Vroninks and Berghmans (Red-Lined VK56).
Romanian Calin Camarasan (Ford Ranger) finished third at 26 minutes and 8 seconds, including a three-minute speeding penalty. He climbs to fourth place in the classification. Antoine Deleporte and Arnaud Lamonnier finished fourth. Notable was the fifth place of JB Equipment Racing. The British pair swapped roles after their retirement on Monday: Mark Foster drove and Tom Sharp navigated, for the first time with a roadbook. According to the team, the new Land Rover Defender coped well with the hammering from the terrain. Today Thomas Jolliffe is back behind the wheel, with Foster as navigator.
At Feryn Dakar Sport, misfortune struck again. Koen Wauters and Tom De Leeuw were on course for a good result, but according to the team a broken drive shaft also damaged a brake line, leaving only the handbrake working. Teammate Pascal Feryn stopped to help. Co-drivers De Leeuw and Kurt Keysers got the car running again, after which both Toyotas drove to the bivouac together, Wauters’s car on rear-wheel drive only. “Look, we leave together, we come home together,” said Feryn, who according to the team lost more than an hour and a half. Wauters finished eighth and Feryn ninth. Wauters remains third in the classification, but almost two hours behind the leaders. Feryn also pointed out how costly his bad luck on Monday had been, when a broken belt knocked him out: “If that belt hadn’t broken yesterday, I’d be second now.”
Magdalena Zajac and Blazej Czekan (Toyota Hilux), the fastest through the dunes on Monday, dropped out. According to the results, they missed 33 control waypoints, and they fall to thirteenth place. The reason has not been disclosed. Konrad and Ramona Theobald also failed to reach the finish.
In the Limited class, Karim Benhassan Krayem and Nouichi Mohamed Elmecano (Toyota LC79) won again, with a 51-minute-and-46-second lead over Ewald Holler and Markus Bodzenta. After the revision of the earlier results, the Tunisians lead with 08:24:54.
Trucks
Paolo Calabria, Loris Calubini and Carlos Alberto Viña (MAN TGA) won among the trucks with a 25-minute-and-29-second lead over the German crew of Stella Koerber, who did reach the finish this time. Michael Wolff dropped out again. Calabria leads by more than nine hours.
The Dutch SSVs
Rob van Horssen and Carlo Spreeuwenberg (Roca Racing Team) were again the best of the Dutch. They finished twelfth, despite a 2-minute-and-40-second speeding penalty, and climb to ninth place in the classification. Dick van Culenborg and Marius Bos drove their best stage so far in fourteenth and stand 24th.
André Thewessen and Jeffrey Spoor finished sixteenth, despite a string of technical problems. According to Spoor, the brakes became too poor in the first part to keep pushing. After the first neutralisation, the front-wheel drive dropped out and the gearbox no longer cooperated properly. Daniel Kersbergen and Michiel Goegebeur finished 22nd. “Captain Slow” and Jan-Willem van Mourik (25th) and Coen Nooijen and Tijs Dijk (26th) each received a two-minute penalty for a missed waypoint. Max and Sem van Empel finished 29th and Harrie van Empel and Stefan van Ras 31st; in the classification they stand in 20th and 21st place.
Henri van Steenbergen and Daan van Ooijen had a tough day. They took more than twelve hours over the stage and finished 40th, 06:48:18 behind Lafay. An explanation is not yet known. In the classification they drop from seventeenth to 29th place. Arjan Donders and Edwin Vloemans, who retired on Monday, did not start the third stage.
Due to the revised results, the Dutch drivers who dropped out on Monday now sit further back: Kersbergen is 35th, Nooijen 36th, Thewessen 38th and Donders 43rd.
Loasis L’original
On the shared route, Rémy Chapot and Adrien Menceron won in the Open class, just eight seconds ahead of Gaëtan Ge and Frédéric Alard. Michel Visy and Paul Durame remain leaders, but their lead over Chapot has shrunk to 2 minutes and 46 seconds. Michel Salvatore did not start. In the 85 class, Yves and Nadia Pelleteret (Suzuki) took over the lead from Philippe Dupuis and Clémence Cracosky with the day’s win; organiser Gilles Girousse did not start. In the 95 class, César Valette and Daniel D’Huster won the stage, but François Jacquot and Lionel Jadot keep the lead, with a 7-minute-and-48-second margin over Serge Mogno and Jacques Perez. Alain Coquelle and Louis Boilly Coquelle continued their run in the 2005 class.
Etappe 4: technisch begin, snelle afsluiting
Today brings a fourth loop around Douz, again shared with Loasis: 305 kilometres, of which 270.05 kilometres against the clock. The bikes start from 08:08 local time, with Knuiman first. Lafay opens for the SSVs, and the cars set off from 08:45. According to the organisation, the first part is the hardest, with a series of serious hazards in quick succession between kilometres 27 and 69. After a fifty-minute neutralisation from kilometre 74, a remote service follows at kilometre 87.53, where the organisation also supplies fuel. After that, the terrain becomes more open, with desert tracks, navigation on compass heading, and passages through villages with speed limits. A second neutralisation of three quarters of an hour runs through Douz. The final part is faster, but still contains rough crossings and changes of direction up to the finish at kilometre 270.05.
