The 2012 Dakar-winning X-Raid team will contest the 2013 event with six Minis and an X3.
French racers Stephane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret, who won the 2012 Dakar rally in their X-Raid Mini All4 Racing, will be back to defend their title.
The team’s other five Minis will be piloted by an international cast of drivers and navigators that includes Nani Roma of Spain and Michel Périn of France, the Russian duo of Leonid Novitskiy and Konstantin Zhiltsov, Polish driver Krzysztof Holowczyc and his navigator Filipe Palmeiro of Portugal, Chilean Boris Garafulic and Frenchman Gilles Picard, and the German pairing of Stephan Schott and Holm Schmidt.
Argentinean Orlando Terranova and his Portuguese co-driver Paulo Fiúza will pilot the team’s X3.
Monster Energy X-raid Team Manager Sven Quandt says “We can rely on drivers we know really well this year. Nearly all of them already raced the 2012 Dakar for us. And Orlando did so in 2011.”
The 2013 Dakar will begin in Lima, Peru on January 5. Its 8,300 kilometer route will include terrain ranging from the Andes Mountains to the Atacama Desert, with stages in Peru, Argentina, and Chile. It will finish on January 20 in Santiago, Chile. Information on the rally, the route, and the competitors can be found on the rally’s web site.—Brian S. Morgan
