Dakar : Team Gauloises Sperrer - Leg 12
Four days to go for the Gauloises Team Raphael Sperrer and its just getting better and better as Sperrer and co-driver Ola Floene arrived at Labe in 13th position with a great time of 4 hours 52 minutes and 49 seconds. Today the two Dakar rookies climbed up to 35th in overall standings with a total time of 75:01:41 at the wheel of their Buggy.
Today`s two stages in Mali and Guinea were a real challenge and Sperrer and Floene had a trouble free day onto their best stage finish of the rally so far.

Today we arrived in Guinea and everything worked perfectly, » Sperrer said. « We made no mistakes and we`re delighted with the great result. These 368km went by really fast and we never thought we could be so high up the order! We repaired the suspension overnight after it was damaged at the start of yesterday`s journey.

Today it held out and we had no problems at all. The path was really narrow and there was plenty of deep water to negotiate. We had to be very careful while still pushing very hard. Ola`s navigation was again excellent. We started fast and kept that pace up until the end. For the last few days we just have to stay completely focused and not make any mistakes.

Ola Floene added : « It was another difficult stage which I`m happy is out of the way. I`m really delighted we got a result above our goals and expectation. We want to see Dakar and are determined to make it to the finish. There`s not far to go and when we reach Tambacounda tomorrow we`ll be only 744km away from Dakar. It will be a mountain stage so it will be tough and the air might get quite thin as we will be driving at quite some altitude. The road will be narrow and there will be a lot of dust, which means overtaking will be difficult, but Raphael and I are ready for the challenge.


Tags: gauloises, sperrer, floene, leg-twelve,