Seven racing cars, six MINI ALL4 Racing and one BMW X3 CC, ten service trucks and two race trucks were shipped to Peru in late November: Team X-raid is going to contest the 8.300-kilometre event across South America with a true armada of vehicles.
The four Monster Energy X-raid Team pairings were confirmed earlier, this year: the French winners of the 2012 Dakar – Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret, Nani Roma (ESP) and Michel Périn (FRA), the Russian pairing Leonid Novitskiy and Konstantin Zhiltsov and Poland’s Krzysztof Holowczyc with his navigator Filipe Palmeiro (POR).
In addition, the X-raid Team colours will be represented by another three pairings: Both Boris Garafulic (CHI)/Gilles Picard (FRA) and the Germans Stephan Schott / Holm Schmidt will make a debut, in the forthcoming Dakar: they are gong to race the event for the first time with a MINI ALL4 Racing. The only BMW X3 CC entered by the Trebur based team will be raced by the Argentinean Orlando Terranova and his Portuguese co-driver Paulo Fiúza.
“We can rely on drivers we know really well, this year,” says Monster Energy X-raid Team Manager Sven Quandt. “Nearly all of them already raced the 2012 Dakar for us. And Orlando did so in 2011.”
The 2013 Dakar Rally will be started on 05th January in Peru’s capital, Lima. From there, the event takes the field along the cost southwards. Following a short detour to Chile, the competitors will drive – via the Andes – to Argentina. There, San Miguel de Tucuman will be the rest day, scheduled for 13th January. Afterward, the drivers will have to cope with the famous dunes of Fiambala to then cross the Andes to Chile. On 20th January, the vehicles will cross the finish line of the 2013 Dakar in Chile’s capital, Santiago.
