You're welcome, luckily Eurosport Germany sometimes has insight Mr Kirby misses. His German collegue Norbert Ockenga is much more well read, much more easily to understand.
After the confusion yesterday, today was a day to play catch-up. Two of four categories had winnners coming from way behind. In the bikes we have a usual suspect who always gets it wrong big time when he has to navigate on his own and loses an opportunity for the overall win. And then he strikes back the next day when he has to start from 17 and can follow all the tracks to victory. I'm talking about Joan Barreda who did just that today. After the first half Barreda was still second after Rui Gonçalves who started even lower (70th place). But the Portugese Sherco rider fell back in the second half to still finish a creditable 14th. Barreda pushed on and gave Honda the first stagewin this rally. Sam Sunderland had an irritracker that didn't work, so the GasGas rider only popped up as 2nd at the finish, 5 minutes slower than "Bang Bang". Kevin Benavides and Skyler Howes came home 3rd and 4th, only a few seconds between them.
Yesterday's winners were the losers today. Daniel Sanders and Mason Klein opened as one of the first, but all the searching cost them precious time. Sanders lost 24 min. as 23rd, Klein came in 33rd after 40 min. In the standings the new leader is Sunderland, so GasGas retains the lead. Adrien van Beveren is 2nd, Sanders 3rd and Walkner 4th. Another big loser is Pablo Quintanilla, who started 2nd but is now dropping back to 7 after losing half an hour.
In the cars Sebastien Loeb had fun, as the stage looked like an extralarge rally special stage with high top speeds. He was battling all day with Al Attiyah and the difference in the first half was never more than a minute. After the stop the Jaguar overtook the Toyota and at the finish Loeb had the fastest time, 1st victory for Prodrive, 15th stagewin for Loeb. Al Attiyah came in 2nd at 3m28s on three wheels as he had a puncture close before the finish line. Both Audi's of Peterhansel and Sainz did a runner from the midpack, starting 23 and 24, clocking the 3rd and 4th time at the finish. Nani Roma finished the 2nd Jag buggy in top 5 as well, he started even further back than the Audi's. The Jaguars are having troubles with body panels falling off and doors suddenly opening, not very assuring with these speeds. Bernard ten Brinke came home in 10th today, Tom Coronel (30th) drove a bit slower: "they are going so fast up front, we started top 20 but just backed off and spared the car. See, not a scratch on her. Only two careful elder owners" 
At the finish Tom and Tim were accosted by a very agitated Vitautas Zala, who thought the brothers hit his Mini when they overtook him. When the Lithuanian had blown off steam he saw he got the wrong Century buggy, as the guilty party was painted blue yellow white, not blue orange. Apologies given and accepted
This morning Wouter Rosegaar caused me to spill my coffee. He was talking to BVSC (radio show here on NPO Radio1) about his exploits in the Dakar in Africa/America and the current race. He also explained why he quit being a codriver for Khalid Al Qassimi. "He is an Arabian prince, he always has these people fluttering around him for his every whim, I called them Elfs. The culture clash was just too big, I could not see myself sharing a car with someone I don't see eye to eye with. I talked to Sebastian (Ericsson) for an hour and I saw we were on the same wavelength." So Rosegaar transferred to EKS whereas veteran Dirk von Zitzewitz took over with Al Qassimi. As the prince got lost yesterday, I wonder how the discussion in that car went 
Ericsson had another very good day, together with teammate "Chaleco" Lopez he was fighting for a stagewin. For two hours Lopez thought he'd won it, but then Guillaume de Mevius trundled in, starting almost bog last after mechanical problems. The Belgian was 4 min quicker than Lopez and almost 7 min quicker than Ericsson. Not bad at all, as he had intented to start with Dakar veteran Tom Colsoul as his codriver, but (again) a positive coronatest meant Colsoul had to be replaced with Robbie Gordon's old co driver Kellon Walch. Seth Quintero had been in contention for the win as well until 290 km, the last WP he got. After that he stopped with a broken front diff and is now waiting for the repairtruck. The OT3 buggy is quick, but like the Audi TT it takes the lines of, it is also prone to breaking down. Lopez leads the Light proto category by seven minutes on Ericsson Behind the Red Bull and EKS entries Pavel Lebedev continues to impress. He's not driving real fast, but very consistent. This consistency brought him a win in the Rally du Maroc, and the Russian slips into 3rd place now. Hans Weijs had a good day, arrived in 17th an hour after De Mevius.
I owe an apology to Dimitri Sotnikov. Turns out he's not just any Kamaz worker drone, he was largely involved in design of the new Daimler Kamaz (the cabin makes it look like a Mercedes Actros). Today again no stopping the Rooskie Fleet: Andre Karginov clocked the fastest time 38s before Sotnikov. Nikolaev lost 2 min and Shibalov lost 4. Loprais was again the first non-Kamaz, Janus van Kasteren has a subscription to 6th place, although he was really happy today with the way his Iveco "danced" through all the dunes and camelgrass. Also back is Maurik vd Heuvel in an International Truck with Scania engine, although he admits he is not fast enough to reach the speeds of the top5 trucks: "I already had trouble catching Pascal (De Baar) and Richard (De Groot)". In the end Vd Heuvel caught up with Gert Huzink and both managed to trump their opponents by a few minutes. In the standings Sotnikov has a 30s lead on Nikolaev, Shibalov (3rd) has a deficit of 18 minutes already
At last there is somewhat of a standing in the classics category, but when you have for example two Lada Nivas, a Daf Dubbelkop, a Peugeot 205 T16, a Porsche 911 and a Citroen CX competing in the same rankings, you're bound to lose track if there IS no tracker. Today's stage was cancelled because of the rainfall which turned the classics route in a swamp, but the ranking was at least amended for yesterday. Leader is Spaniard Xavier Pina in a Landcruiser, 2nd is Yannick Paniagotis in a old Chevy Protruck and third is Stephane Lamarre in the Sunhill buggy that won last year. Best Dutch competitor is Jack Brouwers, 33rd in the Ginaf 2222 "Brummeke"
Edited by Alex79, 03 January 2022 - 20:39.
Kamaz also had an incident in that same south american rally where Nikolaev crashed into a Toyota, but instead of helping the crew, they checked their truck for damage and drove on. Nothing would have happened if the idiot hadn't tried to get time back for "helping". That's were the datalogger came in, proving Nikolaev had not done anything. He was disqualified for that
