And You Thought Boat Racing Had Issues ??????

[Serious News]

Monday Motorsports: Racers Unhappy With a 1-2-3 Finish by Mini at the Dakar Rally

Nani Roma of Spain celebrated an anticlimactic and controversial victory in the two-week-long Dakar Rally, which ended Saturday near Valparaíso, Chile. Roma had taken the lead in the rally during the first week, but his teammate, Stephane Peterhansel, the 11-time Dakar winner and defending champion, gradually cut Roma’s lead from 39 minutes to just two minutes by Wednesday. Another teammate, Nassar Al-Attiyah, ran in third place.

Mini’s team manager, Sven Quandt, decided that it was more important for the Mini trio to maintain their positions to the finish and preserve a 1-2-3 photo opportunity, Agence France-Presse reported. Quandt said the three drivers should protect and hold their positions to the finish, and not risk crashing or breaking down.

But Roma, a former motorcyclist who won the Dakar 10 years ago, couldn’t follow the script. He kept getting lost, getting stuck and getting flat tires, according to the Agence France-Presse report. Despite his best efforts to let Roma stay in front, Peterhansel inadvertently passed him in Friday’s penultimate stage. So, for Saturday’s final stage of the rally, Quandt ordered Peterhansel to let Roma repass him for the lead. Peterhansel and Al-Attiyah both obliged, and parked on the course until Roma had regained a healthy margin.

Roma ended up “beating” Peterhansel officially by six minutes. Al-Attiyah was third. Afterward, Roma called his victory “a dream come true,” while Peterhansel would only say he was “frustrated” by the outcome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/automobiles/monday-motorsports-racers-unhappy-with-a-1-2-3-by-mini-finish-at-the-dakar-rally.html?_r=0

[Top Banana]

This is still a hot issue, but most of the players have passed.

Once upon a time a very big engine company fielded their own team.

One of these drivers was very good and very competitive.

BUT the owner of the big engine company, told the driver that if a certain customer who used his engines was close at the end of the race, let him by.

Over the course of the race, the engine company driver had good luck and ran up front.

But the finish line was coming up, he was in the lead and the customer was closing fast. Yes he let him by for the win, but he won by about 3 inches. He did what he was told and made his point too.

[Ratickle]

It certainly takes something away from the aspect of "competition" when you have scripted winners. Kind of like Pro Wrestling? It's seems even worse on the surface than the teams that develop boats for classes with no other competitors in it, but I'm not completely sure which is overall worse.

To me a competition with no competitors is a time trial, not a race.

A competition with a pre-determined outcome is a farce?

[Ratickle]

The only person in front was Roma, who finished in the top six every day. Nasser Al Attiyah, who won the Dakar in 2011 in a VW Race Touareg, was in third place but a one-hour penalty for missing a waypoint on the fifth day meant he had little chance of winning unless something happened to the two Minis in front.

It was then that team orders took over. Sven Quandt, who manages the Mini team and is a member of the family that owns BMW, told the three leading Mini drivers they had to maintain the same finish order so they could have an all-Mini podium. Quandt did not want to give De Villiers a chance to take third place should the Minis run into problems by driving at full speed.

Not surprisingly, this mandate was not popular with the drivers or the organizers. Roma did run into some problems on the penultimate stage and although Peterhansel slowed down to let Roma pass, Peterhansel ended up winning the stage. Due to a "miscalculation" he took the overall lead by just 26 seconds. That was a no-no, so during the last stage on the last day he stopped about 28 miles from the end of the race to let Roma pass him and officially win by 5 minutes. Al Attiyah finished third, some 57 minutes behind Roma. Ironically it meant that Al Attiyah had actually taken the shortest time of 50 hours and 42 minutes to cover the 3,341 miles of competition stages, so the one-hour penalty was really costly; he could have been a contender for first place.

In the end, all three of the Mini drivers deserved to win. It was the first time since 2011 that the drivers of three cars from the same team sat on the podium. But when VW did it in 2011 it was with three of four cars. This time it was three of 11. Amazingly, all 11 Minis finished, with seven of them in the top 12.

Although these Mini ALL4 Racing cars look like a Mini you can buy from a dealer, they are remarkably similar to trucks and buggies under the skin with a tubular frame chassis. The Minis have permanent all-wheel drive and are powered by BMW twin-turbo 3-liter diesel engines. The Toyota HiLux trucks are also all-wheel drive and powered by Lexus 5-liter V-8 engines. Gordon's HST Gordini and Sainz's SMG Buggy are powered by more powerful Chevy V-8 engines, but are only allowed to drive the rear wheels.

It's worth noting that a second Toyota HiLux, driven by Marek Dabrowski, finished in seventh place overall. A Chinese-made Haval SUV, driven by Christian Lavieille, was the only other non-Mini in the top 10. Meanwhile the two Team Ford Racing Rangers, also powered by V-8 engines, did not fare so well. One of them retired on the first day while the second one, driven by Lucio Alvarez, finished in 22nd place. He finished four stages in the top 10, showing the truck has potential.

Only 62 of the 147 cars that started this year's Dakar managed to finish the 14-day event — a completion rate of 42 percent, which made it the toughest Dakar in a decade

http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2014/01/was-2014-the-toughest-dakar-rally-ever.html