January 14, 2020

Dakar Rally 2020 with Riwald Huzink.

Eurol in Dakar: Seconds game on day 9

"We drove wisely today," said Bernhard ten Brinke after his solid seventh place in today's stage. Without taking too much risk, he and his navigator Tom Colsoul got to the finishline in seventh place in the daily ranking, while at the same time scoring a good starting position for the first part of tomorrow's marathon stage.

For Nasser Al-Attiyah the day also went well, although he may have been disappointed afterwards that he turned out to have missed the day's victory by just 15 seconds (!) after 410 kilometers of racing. However, the second place of the Qatari again was a boost for his general classification, because the number 1 lost a considerable amount of time. This means Nasser is now only 24 seconds behind of the overall lead! It was another great day for Giniel De Villiers (P8) and Fernando Alonso (P9), again with all four cars of the Eurol-supported Toyota GAZOO Team in the Top 10.

Stage 9 footage

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A tough stage for the trucks

Gert Huzink and his navigator Rob Buursen have had to do without an engineer on board for several days now, but in terms of results that seems hardly a problem. Today the duo in the Renault Hybrid scored a fifth place in the daily results of the trucks. Buursen: "The start of the stage was exactly like a rally-stage in Morocco: lots of stones and step-ups in and out of riverbeds. These stages are pretty tough for the truck, but we noticed that it went down pretty well. There were quite a few changes to the roadbook, which made us having to search sometimes, but all in all we are very satisfied with this result! " Riwald teammates Pascal de Baar (P8) and the quick assistance of Ed Wigman also made it a great rally day for Riwald.

Less luck for Van Merksteijn

The day went much less well for Peter van Merksteijn. After scoring his best result in 2020 with a twelfth place yesterday, today he crashed so hard that unfortunately the rally is over for the team. After a jump the car lost a wheel, after which the Hilux rolled over. Both Peter van Merksteijn and Michael Orr escaped unscathed, but the car was completely destroyed.

Birthday

Today Mitchel van den Brink became 18 years old, which he celebrated with his Mammoet Rallysport Team. Yesterday they had an extremely long day after technical problems with the drivetrain, but today they came in nicely as 21st.

SSV

With Kees Koolen and Jurgen van den Goorbergh things didn't go as fast today as in the previous days. Yesterday “VdG” told that they had abandoned the fixed roles of driver and navigator, after Koolen had been ill for a few days earlier in the rally. From then on both men regularly change positions and roles

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