We had a horrendous night! The monotonous sound of the generators begins to ebb away after two hours in camp but the sound of the quad being revved right next to our tents did not.
This carried on till midnight and was restarted again at 3.30am although even in the cold hard light of day I have no idea what mechanical ailment can be cured in this way….
If that was not enough we were treated by a proper desert night as the air become so cold that our shorts and t-shirts were quickly supplemented by trousers, two pairs of socks, a hoodie, plus a jacket and for good measure a bath robe over the top and we were still freezing….
The whole team together slept about an hour and a half during the night even though we completely exhausted ourselves yesterday. No one jumped out of bed this morning keen to go racing.This was not helped by the 130 km liaison or by the fact that by the time we got to the start of the special it had started raining on a track said to be much harder than yesterdays. Despite all of that we began quite well and picked off quite a lot of people who had started infront of us. During the day we also found two locals with obvious skills and experience in the dunes who we decided to follow even though we could have gone faster than them but we figured at what cost.
This help also made the fatigue of the day a little more manageable. We kept a carefully eye on our positions but unfortunately both of our tourist guides fell by the wayside during the special. The first we followed and eventually got stuck on the same dune together they freed themselves first and we followed about 20 minutes behind. Our second tow set such a blistering pace that after 100 km's we not only caught but passed our first guides.
The last 60 km’s of the day we spent behind the Mini pairing of Schott/Schmidt who’s pace we could keep up with quite happily until the last 10 km’s when during a overtaking manoeuvre we were stuck behind a big buggy and in this was today’s race within a race was decided.
We are now resting in the service and our fantastic mechanics Andris and Frici are going over every square millimetre own the car although it again looks like the car took todays stage perfectly and without any issues. And I must say that even though the heat was not so great as in previous days it was great to be welcomed with a cold beer…
A special thanks must go to Somfai Matyi who shared his previous desert experience with us and put together an energy pack for us for every day and night in order to raise our chances that we can take the strain of the race both mentally and physically. Tomorrow we will continue to experiment with tyre pressures as it seems that todays 1,2 bar was still too hard in some of the dunes so we will try 1 bar and see how it goes. Lets hope we get it right as tomorrows day is the longest (if only by a coupe of hundred meters) at 280 km’s and is touted to be the hardest day by the organisers.
After todays result we start in 19th position which means that it will be much harder to make up any positions and to find our guides again but as the tactic worked so well today I think we may try it again. The car is fine, the boys are in a much better mood than yesterday, we managed to collect every GPS waypoint and hopefully by this evening we will know our start ime for the morning. 19:00 hours will be our briefing time and then dinner in the bivouac….
