Gerard de Rooy passed WP1 with the fastest time of all the truck runners and the Dutchman was 48 seconds ahead of team mate Hans Stacey and Wuf van Ginkel. At that moment in the proceedings Lancia rallying legend Miki Biasion, who has joined the Petronas-supported De Rooy Team for the Dakar challenge this year, was in eighth place.

After 57 kilometres of rally action, which included 16 kms of difficult dunes mid-stage, Marcel van Vliet (who previously won the opening stage of the 2009 edition) was declared the stage winner with a total time of 37:45 minutes. #502 Gerard de Rooy meanwhile took second place and he was just 26 seconds behind van Vliet. #511 Biasion pressed on in his usual fast style and gained time over the second part of the stage; he is now in fourth place overall. Biasion, who won two FIA World Rally Championship titles with the factory Lancia team in 1988 and 1989, also has several Dakar rallies to his name already. The Italian veteran finished the opening day just 1:19 minutes behind stage winner van Vliet. The third De Rooy Iveco, the #505 entry driven by Dutchman Stacy was sixth.

“The first 35 kilometres of the special were exploratory for my navigator Hans as for myself. Later on in the dunes we also slowed down a bit as we noticed the difference between a WRC Rally and Le Dakar,” said a satisfied Hans. “The last 15 kilometres were straight clay; usually you can drive with a speed of 150 km/h but a few slow jeeps caused some delay. To top it all, Bernard pushed the 50 km/h button by mistake and again we slowed down. But we learned as a team and we can start tomorrow in an optimistic mood.” The first driver home from the dominant Kamaz team surprisingly only managed to pick up fifth place; Mardeev finishing 1:37 minutes behind the winner.

Amongst the cars it was Leonid Novitskiy (Mini) who won the first stage to claim the top of the leaderboard, and with his team mates Krzysztof Holowczyc and Stephane Peterhansel finishing second and third, 5 and 9 seconds respectively adrift, that gives the team a 1-2-3 position in the standings going into today's second stage. Last year's car category winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah, was an early casualty yesterday, he lost oil and had to be towed out of the stage by team mate Robby Gordon, losing 9 minutes in the process. SS1, which ran from Mar del Plata to Santa Rosa, was however struck by tragedy with the death of bike rider Jorge Boero.

Today there will be no respite as the riders and crews that survived through SS1 - 159 cars, 177 bikes, 30 quads and 71 trucks - will have to cover 781 kilometres today. The timed special stage is 295 kilometres long and the first motorcycle will set off in the early this morning (5:00 am local time), followed by the first car at 6:49 am and the first truck at 9:11 am. The pace required on the fast first half of the route will force the pilots to stay highly focused upon approaching the Sierra Nevada. After a series of wide, fast turns on hard terrain, they will make their entrance onto a landscape of dunes that will slow them down substantially. Now in view of the finish, the sands in El Nihuil have grey hues, the result of intense volcanic activity in this region thousands of years ago. The trucks will have to be extra careful as the last 60 km or so will be covered in the dark.