Touareg News
Carlos Sainz heads historic 1-2-3 win for Volkswagen
Former world rally champion Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz of Spain led an historic Volkswagen 1-2-3 in the 32nd Dakar Rally in Argentina when they brought their Race Touareg home in an overall time of 47h 10min 00sec after 14 days and 9,000km of marathon off-road racing.
It was an emphatic victory for the rally driver they call ‘El Matador’, twice a world rally champion, who had led from stage five. It also made up for the disappointment he experienced 12 months ago when he crashed out of the 2009 Dakar on stage five while leading.
This time Sainz made no mistake and finished a slim 2min 12sec ahead of team-mates Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar and Timo Gottschalk of Germany and 32min 51sec in front of American Mark Miller and South African Ralph Pitchford in the third Volkswagen. Miller and Pitchford, who is the South African off-road champion co-driver, finished second in last year’s Dakar.
The final stage of the 14 stages that made up the 9,000km event was won by Nassar Al-Attiyah, who made a supreme effort throughout the last days to challenge his team-mate’s lead. However, Sainz was not to be denied the overall win and he finished just 36 seconds behind the Qatari on this stage from Santa Rosa to Buenos Aires.
Defending champion Giniel de Villiers of South Africa and his German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz finished seventh overall in a Race Touareg, 5h 10min 19sec behind Sainz. Any chance De Villiers had of winning a second Dakar was dashed when his Volkswagen suffered electrical problems after an accident in stage three on 4 January. He lost over two hours whilst having to wait for his assistance truck. For the rest of the rally he played a support role to his team-mates, carrying spares that slowed him down and stopping to render assistance when needed. Despite this he almost won stage eight on 10 January when he led with just seven kilometres remaining. Unfortunately he dropped back to fourth position on this stage after picking up a puncture.
For in-depth race coverage, personal interviews, team information, rally pictures and more from the 2010 Dakar Rally, visit our Dakar webpage
