Dakar : Team Gauloises Sperrer - Leg 5The Gauloises Team Raphael Sperrer finished the third and last day in Morocco at Tan Tan after a gruelling 819km adventure and a 350km special stage.
"Today we really though we wouldn`t make it!" exclaimed Sperrer. "At last we got to freshen up in the hotel last night, but back on the road at sunrise it was just as dusty as ever. However, we were feeling refreshed and ready to take on the next stage - though we didn`t expect some of the surprises we encountered! Our first surprise came after just 22km when we suffered punctures in both our front tyres while trying to overtake some of our competitors. We replaced the tyres and were going well for 150km until the gearbox started playing up. We were stuck in second gear right until the end of the stage - a complete nightmare."
Raphael Sperrer and his co-driver Ola Floene brought their Buggy (Number 361) were 77th to finish stage five with a time of 05:28:20. Their troubled day means the team is now 63rd overall after 18:27:46.
Co-driver Ole Floene added: "It was really the first time that I thought we might not make it - but we`re so happy to have made it to the checkpoint. Tonight the assistance truck will help us repair and rebuild the gearbox and fix the various problems we had. It was a really frustrating day, but hopefully things will go a bit smoother tomorrow when we enter Mauritania for another long (792km) stage and 444km special. I expect the road to be quite different tomorrow to what we`ve seen so far which will be another challenge for my navigation! It`s hard to believe we`ve already covered 3,067 kilometres, but still have 5,976 ahead of us."
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gauloises,
sperrer,
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leg-five,
