The French pilot Stéphane Peterhansel (Mini). The most successful of the Dakar with thirteen titles , six of them by motorcycle and seven by car, has had a discreet rally start in Saudi Arabia that blames the English indications of its co-driver , the Portuguese Paulo Fiuza.
It is the first time that Peterhansel, teammate of the Spanish Carlos Sainz , has a co-pilot who does not speak French , and that has become a problem to face the first two stages of this Dakar, where navigation and good communication between Pilot and co-pilot have been key to not wasting time.
"In 21 editions of the Dakar, I have never contacted the co-driver in English, so we will have to get used to it, " said Peterhansel at the end of the first stage of the second rally, just two minutes from Lithuanian Vaidotas Zala, winner of that stage.
The matter was worse on Sunday when he lost more than 22 minutes in the second stage between the cities of Al Wajh and Neom, on the shores of the Red Sea. For a moment they ended up lost and in another the steering column was disconnected, which also influenced the bad day of the Frenchman.
"The navigation is complicated and my English does not improve, " he said when he arrived at the camp 'Monsieur Dakar', as he is known inside the rally caravan.
Although the French pilot has good notions of navigation and reading of the "roadbook" (road map), he had always been accompanied by his fellow countrymen, such as David Castera, current director of the Dakar, or Jean-Paul Cottret, who also intervened in the design of the stages of this edition.
In this edition he planned to participate in the rally with his wife Andrea Peterhansel as a co-pilot, a dream that they both wanted to fulfill for some time, and for what they had trained in recent months, but a last-minute injury prevented the German from taking The exit of the rally.
Together, Stéphane and Andrea won the world cup of off-piste rallies this year, demonstrating the complicity of both inside the car.
However, at the last minute the X-Raid Mini team, where Peterhansel is driving one of his buggies, announced that the Portuguese Fiuza would sit to the right of 'Monsieur Dakar' for this edition of the raid that is celebrated entirely in Arabia Saudi
The Dakar takes place from January 5 to 17, leaving in Jeddah and arriving at Qiddiya, the leisure city that is built on the outskirts of Riyadh. In total the rally has a route of almost 8,000 kilometers, of which more than 5,000 are timed.
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