After the rest day, the Portuguese pilot Elisabete Jacinto enters the tracks of Mauritania today, in another stage, the sixth, of the Africa Eco Race.
In this stage, the Portuguese expects to have added difficulties: “when we enter Mauritania, we know that the competition will start to be tougher. From now on, the surface will be very different and the tracks will not be easy to overtake. Our truck is very heavy and is easily stuck in the soft sands of the Mauritanian desert”.
For this reason, “the prospects of winning stages are smaller. However, we will continue to give our best stage after stage to obtain good results”, revealed the Portuguese driver.
Yesterday, Sunday, was the rest day of Africa Eco Race 2015. In Dakhla, a coastal city in the south of Morocco, the OLEOBAN® team made up of Elisabete Jacinto, José Marques and Marco Cochinho enjoyed a day where they had the opportunity to review the mechanics of the competition MAN TGS and adjust the strategies for the next rounds.
Elisabete Jacinto has been highlighted in this competition, where, on the second day, she achieved her first stage victory.
Even with the strong competition it faces this year – at the starting line, there are two KAMAZ, the SCANIA by Miklos Kovacs and the TATRA by Tomas Tomecek, the three-time winner of this competition – the Portuguese showed all its competitiveness by printing a solid and extremely effective movement from the very first moment.
However, a serious mechanical problem affected the MAN TGS of the Portuguese team, during the 4th stage of this Africa Race. This situation heavily penalized the team, which, even so, was able to find solutions to all the difficulties.
In the 5th stage, the Portuguese managed to finish the special, in a brilliant 2nd place among the T4, just three minutes from the winner of the day in the truck category, Sergey Kuprianov's KAMAZ.
Despite the difficulties registered, Elisabete Jacinto makes a positive assessment of the first part of this race: “the specials we completed in Morocco went well and, if it weren't for the mechanical problem we had during the 4th stage, we would certainly be discussing places from the front of the race. We won a special and showed that we managed to be very competitive”, he added.
In sporting terms, this seventh edition of the Africa Eco Race is led by Jaques Loomans, in the joint auto truck classification, while the Russian Anton Shibalov, from the KAMAZ team, is ahead of the T4 category.
Elisabete Jacinto appears, due to the heavy penalty suffered in the fourth stage, in the 24th position of the general classification.
So far, five of the 12 stages that make up this rally have been completed and 2759 kilometers have been covered on Moroccan soil.
This Monday, the caravan will leave Morocco and will make a long connection of 437 kilometers to Mauritania.
The special of this sixth stage, which links Dakhla to Chami, is already on Mauritanian soil. At the border crossing, the teams cover the famous 7 km of the so-called “Nobody's Land”. The selective sector will be short, with only 174 timed kilometers.
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