As the Dakar Rally enters the final four stages and heads towards the finish line in Buenos Aires on Sunday, the Iveco powered Ginaf truck of Gerard de Rooy is in a very solid third place in the truck category after earlier problems cost him the race lead.

As the Dakar Rally enters the final four stages and heads towards the finish line in Buenos Aires on Sunday, the Iveco powered Ginaf truck of Gerard de Rooy is in a very solid third place in the truck category after earlier problems cost him the race lead. He is now half an hour behind the two Kamaz factory trucks that lead the race, and are split by just 14 seconds, but has a massive advantage of 4 hours over the fourth placed truck.

Private team driver Gerard de Rooy keeps on performing well though. Always among the frontrunners on the South American stages in his Ginaf truck powered by an Iveco Cursor 13 engine, from the start in Buenos Aires on Saturday 3rd January he won stage two and four to move into the overall lead. However stage 6 became very difficult and most competitors got stuck in the dunes with only 20 of the 61 remaining trucks reaching the goal without assistance. De Rooy dropped down to third place, loosing 25 minutes and his overall lead to the two Russian Kamaz factory drivers Vladimir Chagin and Firdaus Kabirov. The MAN factory team experienced a debacle on this treacherous stage, titleholder Han Stacey, never able to make up for the top spot this year, had to withdraw after getting stuck in muddy terrain, while the team's fast assistance truck driven by Geert Verhoeven dropped out with turbo damage. Franz Echter survived for MAN but he has now to drive on towards the rally's finish without any fast assistance support.

Stage 7 was cancelled because track conditions became too bad after heavy thunderstorms meaning the battered competitors were able to reach the sanctuary of the rest day, located in Valparaioso. Stage 8 was WRC-like, contested over fast and winding mountain roads and it proved an easy win for de Rooy's powerful and agile Ginaf-Iveco, proving that although the Dutchman had lost a lot of time and was unlikely to win overall, he was still a highly competitive proposition. Second place went to Chagin (Kamaz) while third went to 'crazy boy' Ales Loprais (Tatra).

With stage 9 the Dakar entered a new challenge in the Atacama, said to be the driest desert of the world. De Rooy's plan was: “holding third place but not missing chances for a better ranking," and chased by Chagin, both drove far off from the right track after 80 km. CP1 therefore saw Tomecek in his antique Tatra as the surprise truck category leader of the stage. This seemed to have made him too euphoric as 20 km later he crashed violently, rolling over at high speed. Along with other competitors, de Rooy stopped to give help to Tomecek and his crew. Chagin, by this time already in the front, drove to a striking victory, 25 minutes ahead of de Azevedo (Tatra), 33 minutes ahead of team-mate Kabirov and 34 minutes in front of de Rooy. The finishing times were provisional though as Kabirov and de Rooy received a time bonus since they had stopped to help the Tomecek.

Stage 10 saw de Rooy chasing Chagin across the finish line, just 1 minute and 43 seconds adrift of the Russian, while Kabirov was third, just under 4 minutes back. Stage 11, to be contested yesterday, was cancelled due to fog, leaving the competitors to depart from Fiambala for this morning's timed stage, comprising of 253 kms timed, and 265 km of connections, before the crews arrive in La Rioja. After the first three trucks passed CP1 located after 62 km of today’s special stage de Rooy checked in first, 3 minutes ahead of the leader in the general standings Russian driver Chagin (Kamaz) and 12 minutes ahead of the latter’s countryman and team mate Kabirov (Kamaz). Also this morning news was breaking that rally leader overall and in the car category Spaniard Carlos Sainz (VW Touareg) has crashed into a ravine and is out.