Winning the gruelling Dakar race has again proved an elusive goal for the Toyota Gazoo Racing team.
The team could not secure a podium position in this year’s rather chaotic race, following its third spot last year.
Peugeot earlier this month celebrated a comprehensive win at the Dakar 2017 finish line in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by clinching all three spots on the podium.
Stéphane Peterhansel took his personal tally of Dakar wins to 13 – six on two wheels and seven on four wheels.
Peterhansel was assisted in the 2017 race by Jean-Paul Cottret. They drove a Peugeot 3008DKR.
Team-mate and multiple world-rally champion Sebastien Loeb was in second place, with Cyril Despres rounding out the podium.
Notwithstanding missing out on a podium position, three South African-built Toyota Hilux race vehicles finished the South American race in the top ten.
Nani Roma and navigator Alex Bravo were the top-placed Toyota crew, at number four, while Zimbabwean newcomer Conrad Rautenbach and navigator Rob Howie finished in ninth place overall.
Rautenbach’s performance won him the Rookie of the Year award.
It was an up and down event for Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Giniel de Villiers and navigator Dirk von Zitzewitz, who managed a fifth spot in this year’s race.
Toyota Gazoo Racing started the 2017 race with a bang. Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and French navigator Mathieu Baumel won the short opening stage of the race, with South Africa’s De Villiers and Germany’s Von Zitzewitz recording the fifth-fastest time for stage one.
Stage two saw Al-Attiyah and Baumel record the second-fastest time, while De Villiers and Von Zitzewitz maintained their position.
Stage three changed the game, however.
Al-Attiyah ran wide near the end of the stage, and a hole on the side of the road ripped the right rear wheel from the car, damaging the suspension in the process.
With Al-Attiyah and Baumel out of the race, all attention shifted to De Villiers and Von Zitzewitz. However, stage three also brought disappointment for De Villiers, who last won the race in 2009.
“The stage was tricky from the start,” he explains. “We lost a little bit of time with navigation in the beginning, but then we knuckled down and got on with the job at hand, taking back time bit by bit.”
The team put in a solid performance, until a fuel pressure problem halted their charge.
They were forced to stop and work through the problem, losing around 30 minutes in the process, which saw them tumble down the order.
“Dakar 2017 will be long remembered for a variety of reasons,” says Toyota Gazoo Racing team principal Glyn Hall.
“The extreme weather certainly played a massive role, with stages cancelled and modified, reducing the competition’s overall race distance significantly.”
The altitudes of the Bolivian Altiplano also counted against the normally aspirated Toyota V8 engines, and route director Mark Coma’s latest route truly tested the navigators as much as the drivers.