Justin Gerlach has retaken the lead in the motorcycle class on the fifth stage of the Fenix Rally. On the 207-kilometre dune loop around Douz, the German was 4 minutes faster than Jeremy Knuiman, who now trails by 2 minutes and 31 seconds. Daan Veenendaal again finished third. In the cars, Magdalena Zajac was fastest for the second day running, and Vincent Thijs and Arjan van Tiel held on to their comfortable overall lead. In the SSVs, Pierre Lafay’s winning streak came to an end: Italians Riccardo Benettolo and Martina Musiari won the stage.
The fifth stage was a day of soft sand, dunes and off-piste navigation. A striking number of competitors picked up penalty time for missed waypoints. The top three in the cars each received 45 minutes of penalties for three missed waypoints, and in the SSV and motorcycle classes the penalties also added up considerably. The stage also marked the end of the stay in Douz: today the caravan heads to Monastir on the Mediterranean, where tomorrow’s final stage awaits.
Motorcycles: Gerlach back on top
Gerlach came in at 04:57:07, including two minutes of penalties for a missed waypoint. Knuiman was second at 4 minutes, with the same penalty. Veenendaal finished third at 15 minutes and 26 seconds. His time includes 19 minutes of penalties for three missed waypoints. He remains third overall, 01:02:15 behind Gerlach. The battle for the overall win stays a two-way fight between Gerlach and Knuiman, with two stages still to go.
Frenchwoman Sara Jugla (Kove 450 Rally) rode her best stage in fourth and climbed to fifth overall. Richard Wijntjes was eighth, with two minutes of penalties, and slipped from fifth to seventh. Pascal de Baar finished twelfth and stays ninth. Algerian Abdelkader Mebarki retired.
Among the quads, Adam Krysiak won again, 9 minutes and 13 seconds ahead of Karol Slugocki. He now leads by 01:38:50.
SSV: Benettolo breaks Lafay’s streak
Benettolo and Musiari (Taurus T3 Max) won the stage in 04:34:22. Nicolas Martinez and Lili Delfino (Overdrive OT3) were second at 4 minutes and 18 seconds, and Lafay and Loïc Minaudier finished third at 11 minutes and 28 seconds. Hugues Lacam and Delphine Delfino, who are no longer in contention for the overall after their retirement on Monday, were fourth. Lafay still leads by 54 minutes and 56 seconds over Martinez. Benettolo climbed to third.
Behind the leaders, a lot changed. David and Laura Bord, fourth after four stages, retired, as did Eric Culus and Carla Isidoro and Raoul Fenestraz and Lili-May Mansuy. Xavier and Diego Lormand and Adrien Leyreloup and Tom Fauconnet each lost three quarters of an hour to penalty time. Benefiting from that were Frédéric Henricy and Eric Bersey, who finished fifth on the stage and sit fourth overall, and Belgians Marc and Wout Lauwers (Art of Speed), who climbed to fifth. Their teammates Patrick Hillewaere and Jeff Melkert rode the team’s best stage in seventh. Hans den Ouden and Dirk Goris lost 45 minutes to three missed waypoints and dropped to eighth.
Cars: Zajac fastest again, Thijs and Van Tiel hold firm
Zajac and Blazej Czekan (Toyota Hilux) ran the special penalty-free in 04:51:11. Thijs and Van Tiel were second at 59 minutes and 34 seconds, but that includes 45 minutes of penalties. Without the penalty, the gap to Zajac was 14 minutes and 34 seconds. Vincent Vroninks and Dave Berghmans received the same penalty and finished just 44 seconds behind Thijs. As a result, the overall gap stayed virtually unchanged: Thijs and Van Tiel lead by 29 minutes and 54 seconds. Antoine Deleporte and Arnaud Lamonnier, with over an hour of penalties, remain third.
Van Tiel called it “a tricky dune day.” “The dunes in Tunisia don’t really suit us,” the navigator said. The short little dunes in particular are, in his view, a tricky obstacle for a car. That is characteristic of the Tunisian Sahara. In the Grand Erg Oriental around Douz, alongside long dune ridges there are above all many small, closely packed little dunes, known in rally circles as “dunettes.” They leave little room to build up speed, force constant braking and accelerating, and often have a short, steep back side. According to Van Tiel, the pair stayed close to Vroninks, second overall, all day.
Koen Wauters and Tom De Leeuw were sixth, also with 45 minutes of penalties. Wauters described the stage as almost entirely off-piste, with many dunes whose back sides dropped away steeply, and difficult navigation. In his view, their team was not the only one to miss waypoints. He estimates that “about 80 percent of the entire bivouac” missed those waypoints, and thinks the roadbook was wrong. A response from the organisation on that is not known. The results do show that the three fastest cars after Zajac all received three missed waypoints. In sporting terms little changed for Wauters: he is fourth, well over two hours behind third and well over two hours ahead of fifth. “It was actually a beautiful stage, but we couldn’t enjoy it,” he said. “The dunes and the surroundings set the pace for you.”
Pascal Feryn and Kurt Keysers did not start the fifth stage. The reason has not been made public. Calin Camarasan, Henry Ulke and Stefan Dorn and Konrad and Ramona Theobald also failed to reach the finish. JB Equipment Racing was tenth, with more than two hours of penalties for ten missed waypoints. Italians Manuele Mengozzi and Elisa Tassile even received 02:32:00 of penalties for eleven missed waypoints.
In the Limited class, Karim Benhassan Krayem and Nouichi Mohamed Elmecano won again. They lead by 11:38:27 over Ewald Holler and Markus Bodzenta. Three Tunisian crews either failed to finish or did not start.
Trucks
In the trucks, Germans Stella Koerber, Maximilian Jackermeier and Sebastian Roedel won their first stage, 3 minutes and 55 seconds ahead of Paolo Calabria, Loris Calubini and Carlos Alberto Viña. Both crews received nearly three hours of penalties for missed waypoints. Calabria leads by 09:12:21. Michael Wolff did not start.
The Dutch SSVs
Henri van Steenbergen and Daan van Ooijen (GPR Oryx) rode their best stage of the rally. Penalty-free, they were eighth, the best of the Dutch, and climb to 23rd. Rob van Horssen and Carlo Spreeuwenberg were 21st, but moved up to ninth overall thanks to the retirements ahead of them. That makes them the highest-placed Dutch SSV crew. Dick van Culenborg and Marius Bos were fifteenth, despite 38 minutes of penalties for six missed waypoints, and climbed to twelfth.
Max and Sem van Empel were 24th and sit sixteenth overall. Harrie van Empel and Stefan van Ras lost 32 minutes to penalty time and were 27th; they are fifteenth. Coen Nooijen and Tijs Dijk were 28th, Daniel Kersbergen and Michiel Goegebeur 29th, and “Captain Slow” and Jan-Willem van Mourik 30th. The last of those picked up 21 minutes of penalties and sit twentieth.
André Thewessen and Jeffrey Spoor retired again. According to Spoor, the brakes were fine this time, but the gearbox faltered. After an initial reset they got stuck after crossing a dune, after which the car refused to move. After more than two and a half hours of wrenching they gave up and had to wait a long time in the dunes for the sweep truck, which brought them back to the bivouac.
Loasis L’Original
The Loasis historic vehicles again followed their own route. In class 95, Jules Mautret and Antoine Paque (Chevrolet) set the fastest time by a wide margin, but François Jacquot and Lionel Jadot stay in the lead, 6 minutes and 2 seconds ahead of Serge Mogno and Jacques Perez. In the Open class, Gaëtan Ge and Frédéric Alard won ahead of Rémy Chapot and Adrien Menceron, who remain in the lead by 34 minutes and 13 seconds. Pierre and Lucas Gourragne won in class 2005, where Alain Coquelle holds the lead. In class 85 the day’s win went to Julien Aurouze and Sandrine Bolec, while Philippe Dupuis and Clémence Cracosky stay on top.
Stage 6: from Douz to Monastir
Today the competitors leave Douz for a long endurance stage of 437 kilometres to Monastir, again jointly with Loasis. The roadbook counts 356 waypoints, and according to the organisation, concentration, mechanical insight and disciplined navigation matter more than pure speed. The route features three neutralisations and runs through populated areas with many speed-restricted zones. The most dangerous point lies at kilometre 120.61, with a mandatory two-second stop. Shortly after comes the long crossing of the Chott, the salt flat. Its surface can look completely dry but suddenly turn very soft. The organisation advises keeping up pace there, following existing tracks, seeking out the vegetation where the ground is usually firmer, and not coming to a standstill on soft terrain. After that come an active railway crossing at kilometre 180 and a long final run towards the coast.
