Dakar Rally 2017. Day 4. San Salvador De Jujuy, Argentina - Tupiza, Bolivia. Orpheus Group Stage.

Dakar Rally 2017. Day 4. San Salvador De Jujuy, Argentina - Tupiza, Bolivia. Orpheus Group Stage.

Day 4 of the race, occurring on the 5th January 2017, saw the Dakar 2017 enter the country of Bolivia through the sandy Altiplano.

For Cyprus Team the day started well, almost no mistakes were made with the improvement of their overall positioning, especially towards the end of the stage, where the team sped up due to the trucks race closing in on their tale.

The route was also highlighted by the presence of the grey-sand dunes, that were almost impossible to traverse, causing many racers (including Dakar sharks such as Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz) to fly off course and their cars to sustain significant damages that resulted in total losses of their vehicles and their elimination from the race.

Roman and Bert tried to take on the dunes, but after a vicious two-hour struggle and seeing big names failing the task, decided to follow the example of most of the other races, that was to risk the penalty by diverting from the inscribed route to go around the dunes, yet save the cars and play it secure.

Despite a significant penalty, our team managed to survive this day and finished it on the unprecedented 36th position!

PS. More news updates coming up later tonight. We apologize for a small delay in posts. The current situation occurred due to the technical difficulties, i.e. no internet connection in Bolivian mountains, thus no fist hand reports from the team. Yet now, we are reconnected and posses all the needed information.

Stay tuned!