The Toyota Blog

Dream finish to the Dakar 2012. Team Imperial Toyota concluded their maiden foray into the ultimate test of endurance with a 3rd place for Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz in the number 301 Hilux, an 11th place for Duncan Vos and Rob Howie in the number 313 sister car, while the team Overdrive entered South African Hilux of Lucio Alvarez and Andy Graue finished 6th in the 2012 edition of the Dakar – Argentina, Chile, Peru.

What a boytjie ! Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz led the last real stage of the 2012 Dakar until confusion at a waypoint caused them to slip back to a second place for the day, cementing their 3rd place overall. Dirk von Zitzewitz: “..we were on km 240 where there was supposed to be a waypoint, but it did not come up. We could see bike tracks to our left, the West and went looking for the waypoint in that direction. We saw a helicopter had landed there, at a big drop off that was not on the road book – because we weren't supposed to be there.

Peru provides toughest challenge. If anyone thought that the Atacama ended in Chile, they were proven wrong today, on day 13, stage 12 of the Dakar. Not long after the cars disappeared into the seaside dunes, the running order started to change tales of woe started to emerge from the dunes. Conditions were not what most people expected.

Giniel de Villiers: “These were the trickiest dunes we've had so far, anything could happen out there. They're not that big, but steep and tricky, very, very difficult.”

Time to keep it all together. With only three stages to go, all three the South African Hilux's are in the top ten, with Giniel in third place. Today's stage from Arica to Arequipa was another long, harsh trek through the Atacama, alternating between steep rocky climbs and the perils of fesh-fesh.

Giniel finished 4th, Duncan 9th and Lucio 10th, to not only finish inside the top ten, but to also keep all three vehicles in the top ten overall. As on previous days, the Imperial Toyota's ran like clockwork, making their music across the desert without any major mechanical trouble.

The Dakar starts to bite. The terrain for today's 11th stage was very hard on the cars and their crews. Now, firmly in the second week of the race, attrition has become a fact of life for many of the competitors. The organisers, who are familiar with the ways of the Dakar, has taken this into account and the bivouacs have been getting steadily smaller as the race progressed.

It is hard to imagine a more desolate landscape than the one the teams traversed today. Barren and vast, the entire Atacama is inhospitable and unforgiving.

On track and getting stronger. Stage nine on day ten of the Dakar was a 400km sprint across hard, stony tracks which ended in soft sand and the iconic 2,5km descent down a steep dune face into the Iquique bivouac.

Settling down. Today's 8th stage of the 2012 Dakar was a day of consolidation for team Imperial Toyota. The long hard stretches (some of the straights were in excess of 20km long) showed that the Imperial Toyota Hilux's lacked the straight line speed to beat the unrestricted Hummers and turbo-diesel Minis. On the positive side, the three South African Toyotas finished 6th (Giniel), 9th (Lucio) and 10th (Duncan), the first time that all the cars finished in the top ten.

With Friday’s stage six between Fiambala in Argentina and Copiapo in Chile cancelled because of bad weather conditions that made it unsafe for competitors to negotiate the high-altitude crossing of the Andes Mountains, the first week of the Dakar Rally is just one stage away from ending.

Instead, the remaining competitors (125 cars, 130 motorcycles, 21 quads and 71 trucks) travelled in convoy through the Paso San Francisco pass at 4 700 metres above sea level directly to Copiapo.

The half time whistle blows. After seven days 4,553 km's and 30 hours of sleep, it is half time. The team gets an opportunity to regroup and catch its breath before tackling the second half of this epic adventure.