Stephane Peterhansel on a Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution II has taken top position at the eleventh Italian Baja after the first three special stages of today. The frenchman has taken the lead this morning with a phantastic first special stage, leaving his teammate Hiroshi Masuoka with 4 minutes delay, at the end of the day with a total 4.34 min. The frenchman has won all three stages of 130 km each and finds himself on top of the classification with 4.34 ahead of Masuoka, holding an advantage of 9 minutes on third placed Carlos Sousa on a Strakkar. Today, we had enourmous amounts of dust at the Observatory, but <> did not have any problems with that because he was driving first for most of the day. Only at the end of the second lap, he had some problems when passing a motobiker. The track of this year, that’s what everybody said, is very hard but also very selective and difficult compared to the last years. A lot of drivers had to retire, one of these excellent drivers being Gregoire de Mevius with the BMW X-Raid, who broke an engine support which destroyed the steering and forced him to stop. Luc Alphand having trouble on the last lap with the central differential. Jutta Kleinschmidt with Volkwagen Tarek has lost a lot of places in the classification because she missed a stamp control in the first lap and got a penality. Al Mutaiwei with the Nissan Pick-up had to stop in the last lap with a broken engine, differential and gearbox.
The best placed italian in the classification is Edi Orioli with the Nissan Tecnosport on sixth place overall. He is very satisfied with that result while facing with waiting for the last two laps of 105 km each. In the motobike category, after the two special stages of today, France Dal Bello remains first with his Honda 3.32 Minutes ahead of Enzo Manenti on a Husqvarna, Franco Dal Bello has won the two specials of today without any dust problems because he started first. We have seen a lot of retirements today also for the motobikes. A lot of drivers will be remembering the Italian Baja this year as one of the hardest and most difficult ones for the last years. Tomorrow is the last day of the race; this is the third stage for the motobikes and the second for the cars. The motobikes starting first at 07.30 h and they have to drive one lap of 105 km, followed by a spectacular Super Speciale of 8 km. The cars have to do two laps of 105 km each, the start being at 09.15 h.
