Albert Llovera-Àlex Haro (Buggy MD Rallye) got over yesterday’s incident in a spectacular way and raced at a very strong pace from the very beginning of stage 5 from Copiapo to Antofagasta, on the eastern coast of the Pacific ocean. The Andorran-Catalan team however was not able to finish the stage without issues. Between WP8 and WP9, they lost almost 2 hours due to a problem with the left back wheel. At the end they crossed the finish line on 57th position (they started 63rd in the ranking). It is worth pointing out that up until when they had the problem, Llovera-Haro were consistently amongst the 35 best drivers in each of the previous way points.
In the cars category, the winner was the Russian team, Vasilyev-Zhitsov (Mini), which finished the 458 km of the stage in 4h19’18”.
Before the beginning of the stage, Albert was very cautious, to face the stage from such a backward position is always inconvenient, here are his words: It is one of the negative consequences of yesterday’s problem, probably the worst. All the motorbikes and most of the cars will start before us, and it is even possible that some of the fastest trucks will overtake us half way through the stage. I am certain that the tracks will be very difficult in general, but specifically the fesh-fesh areas will be left very complicated. This is the Dakar and we have to keep going in spite of it all. In today’s route, the teams reached an altitude of 3000 metres, which added to the strain on very tired drivers and engines: It is true that we were driving offensively in this stage, but when we were about 130 km from the end our back left wheel overtook us. Two of the studs that hold it in place had broken and the brake pad was bent. We took the pad out and put the wheel back as fixed as we could; from there on we had to take it easy until the finish line.
Tomorrow (9th January) the Dakar 2015 continues towards the North of Chile, more specifically it will reach Iquique, a city where this year the route won’t take the teams down the traditional and magnificent dune just before the bivouac on the Pacific coast.
For the teams still holding on in the cars category, amongst which are Llovera-Haro, it will be a 647 km stage divided into 350 km road side section and a special stage 277 km long. In the special the teams will face once again their main obstacle: the dunes.
 Press service.
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