2012 Stage 5 Quotes

Quotes from Stage 5 of the 2012 Dakar Rally

Nasser Al-Attiyah - Finished 11th

" The spare wheel was loose and it hit the engine water pipe, breaking it and after the temperature was very high, so we stopped to repair again and lost a lot of time. But what can I do? I was really having a good run, I was doing my maximum but I don't know what's wrong, you know. My plan today was to take at least ten minutes from everybody and that's what was happening because I was really fast until CP2, I think. But after, we stopped there because we needed water and to fix and prepare the car. So, yes, I'm disappointed again!"

Robby Gordon - Finished 2nd

"I actually kind of paced it the whole time and we didn't have any problems. Our car works good enough on those type of sections. I was surprised that we got beat by Holowczyc, he did a great job, but for us to beat Peterhansel by 3 minutes was good and that makes up a little bit of the distance. I think we beat De Villiers by about ten minutes, so I'm going to say, looking at what we see right now, we're probably in third position and we've got a long way to go. I'm not even driving the car that hard."

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Permalink Reply by Brad on January 6, 2012 at 5:58am

I second that thought. Race to win. If nothing bad had happened and Nasser was in first right now what would everyone be talking about.

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Permalink Reply by JAYCON on January 6, 2012 at 12:27am

Its clear that Nasser is the quickest racer out there from cp to cp overall. Unfortunately he is in a position that he has to go hard to catch up from this early in the race which is leading to car troubles. Everything is breakable on any car in any race. Thats racing. The question is how much can the Hummer take?

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Permalink Reply by Todd Richards on January 6, 2012 at 12:41am

Forget about Robby proofing it has to be Nasser proofed. Big time G out and bent the tire mounting tubes and letting the spare tire rub the water lines. Maybe RG needs to put a shield over the lines so when this happens again it wont break the water tubes again.

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Permalink Reply by speedy7 on January 6, 2012 at 12:47am

You can't fix something that breaks untill it breaks, then you can invent a cure all, just saying.....

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Permalink Reply by JAYCON on January 6, 2012 at 12:59am

When building a race truck you TRY to think of every worst case scenario but somethings you miss. Smaller budget team like RGM might have 1 or 2 guys designing a particular aspect of the truck and a larger team MINI might have 6-8 guys to bounce ideas off.

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Permalink Reply by Carl Abrams on January 6, 2012 at 10:59am

Few quick questions.
How Many Races has Robby won in trucks built by HIS employees?
How Many Races have other drivers have won in trucks built by the same team members?
How Many Championships have been won in these same trucks?

Shit happens, Shit breaks and as stated above once it does you can prevent it from happening again.

Yes Nasser is driving the piss out of the Hummer which is his job and at the same time may cause a few things to break.
At the same time that driving style has led to hitting trees and getting stuck as well but that too is also part of the game.
Hell if it were not for that mound of bunch grass that kept them from rolling all the way over "from the way I seen it" they would have been in a far worse position now.

Bottom line, If Nasser is unhappy with what he has under him nothing else matters and he will run it till it is out of the race.
If he understands the situation and can quit thinking everything is the fault of the Hummer/Team he can still salvage a respectable finish and be proud of what they accomplished with a team that was thrown together in less than a month.