“Great stage today! Only one perilous moment when we lost our bumper, but that was it. Let’s try to keep this feeling,” said an elated Tom Colsoul, the navigator of the #502 Team De Rooy Iveco Powerstar, last night just after he had heard that they had won the second special stage.

After a short but  thrilling opening stage, the participants started yesterday with the real rally work ahead of them, and the #502 Iveco driven by Gerard De Rooy was perfectly positioned thanks to an excellent second place on SS1. A special stage of 295 kilometres in length would bring the convoy of cars, bikes, quads and trucks from Santa Rosa de la Pampa to San Rafael, and in the end it turned out to be a tough day.

Right from the beginning of the stage there was a exciting battle with very small time differences. Franz Echter was the fastest at WP1, passed after 100 kilometres of the timed action, Gerard De Rooy was second, just 22 seconds back, while the other two factory-supported Iveco's of Miki Biasion and and Hans Stacy were fifth and sixth respectively. After another three quarters of an hour, at WP3, Echter was still on the lead, but De Rooy had clocked the same time and Stacy was within 10 seconds. Biasion meanwhile was sixth, 1 minute 27 seconds behind.

At the finishline stage victory went to Gerard De Rooy's #502 Iveco Powerstar, the Dutchman was 3 minutes 21 seconds ahead of the Russian #500 Kamaz crew, Nikolaev/Savostin/Rybakov, and 4 minutes 56 seconds ahead of his Iveco team-mate, the #505 of Stacey. Biasion, in the #511 entry, lost a bit of time during the last, tough, part of the stage and finished in seventh, 9 minutes and 40 seconds back. The team's fast service trucks also did well, Pep Vila finished 12th with his Trakker Evo II, at 23 minutes back; he was just behind Echter who suffered problems during the last part of the stage. Meanwhile Jo Adua finished fifteenth and that signified that Team de Rooy had all five trucks in the top-fifteen.

That puts De Rooy into a steady 5 minute 30 second overall lead going into today's third stage. Meanwhile, Stacy was pleased with his third place yesterday but ready to challenge for the top spots today: “My navigator, Hans van Goor, is doing a great job! The only technical problem I have is on the road-holding. The springs of my rear axle are not optimally tuned so I have some problems in the bends”, said the experienced Dakar driver, “being 19 seconds behind Nikolaev, it has to happen [today]….” Stacey is just 5 minutes 49 seconds off the rally leader, while Biasion drops down to eighth place overall, 10 minutes 20 seconds off the top spot.

Today's third stage starts in San Rafael and ends in San Juan. The route sees a lot of fast sections that will demand the utmost concentration from the drivers and navigators. The trucks will cover 500 kilometres in total, including the timed special stage which is 209 kilometres long. Gerard De Rooy will lead the 51 surviving trucks out, starting at 14:53 (local time).