Congratulations to Nasser Al-Attiyah on winning his first Dakar rally. Nasser kept out of trouble, didn't seem to suffer from as many punctures as the others and his car was good as gold, all the things that need to come together to win such a grueling endurance event as the Dakar. It's a great achievement for the Qatari and I can see him winning many more Dakar rallies in the future.
Carlos Sainz eventually finished 3rd, behind his teammate Giniel de Villiers, after having a few terrible stages. On Stage 10 he got the car stuck on a hill with no one to help him, losing 18min 13sec, and then on Stage 11 he hit a hole and broke the suspension on his Touareg 3 losing a further 1h 14min 50sec which put him completely out of contention. Sainz drove well for the rest of the rally and now holds the record for Dakar stage wins in the car class with 24, beating Peterhansel who has 23 wins.
With a 1-2-3 finish for Volkswagen I don't see that they have anything else to prove on the Dakar. I wonder will they be back next year? There have been rumours going around for quite a while of Volkswagen entering the WRC, which is very exciting. It would be great to see them there, especially as their great German rival BMW is starting a full WRC campaign in 2012 with MINI. It will also be very interesting to see if VW Group choose to use a diesel engine in their WRC car like they have done in almost all of their motorsport activities in recent years.
Final results:
http://www.dakar.com/dakar/2011/us/stage-13/rankings/overall-cars-page-1.html
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