Stage 9

The 2014 Dakar will reach its most northern point in Iquique, where the competitors will see the ocean for the first time this year. Above all, the drivers and teams will discover the Atacama Dunes again after a first part of a special stage which will be rather tedious. Dune specialists will be in command over a distance of almost 150km. Thrills will be guaranteed at the very end of the day, on the last three kilometres of the descent to Iquique: there is more than a 30% difference in height from start to finish and it is almost not recommended to break. The law of gravitation takes on its full meaning: the bivouac is not far away!

Behind the day’s winner Andrey Karginov (Kamaz), Gerard De Rooy (Iveco) has finished in second place on the day’s special, ahead of Dmitry Sotnikov (Kamaz) in third who is 28′48″ behind the winner. However, he could be relegated down the time sheet by trucks that have yet to finish: Eduard Nikolaev (Kamaz) and Ales Loprais (Tatra).

Russian Eduard Nikolaev minutes later indeed managed to grab third place from his team-mate Dmitry Sotnikov. 1 second separates the two Kamaz on completion of the 422-km long special stage! Loprais is 4th.

Overall, Gerard de Rooij is still first, but he has a Kamaz on his heels now.  He said: They’re not going to push me or make me crazy. On the dune it was a hard surface so we were stuck there for several minutes, but we managed to get out. It was a really hard day, not our day. It was Kamaz’s day. They took 19 minutes but I knew they were going to win, but by that much? I hadn’t thought it would be like that. Yes, it’s a small gap, but that’s the race… I knew that today was going to be a day for Kamaz. We hope for more sand, but let’s wait for it. We managed to finish and stay on the top, but Karginov was driving way too fast. He’s taking so many risks. I saw all the errors he made on the special. He missed the corners a lot of times so he’s pushing too hard. I drive may own race, same as always.