Dakar Trucks, Stage 12: Versluis gets second win, De Rooy extends lead

Peter Versluis set the pace in the penultimate stage of the Dakar 2016 truck race, while leader Gerard de Rooy pulled further away from his main rivals.

#510 Man: Peter Versluis, Marcel Pronk, Artur Klein

#501 Iveco: Gerard de Rooy, Moises Torrallardona, Darek Rodewald

#514 Iveco: Federico Villagra, Jorge-Perez Companc, Andres Memi

#506 Man: Hans Stacey, Serge Bruynkens, Jan van der Vaet

For the trucks, the Friday stage was run on a shorter timed route of 267 km - almost half the distance covered by the three other categories.

42-year-old Versluis, who had also triumphed back in Stage 2 following a Hans Stacey penalty, topped the leaderboards at each waypoint of the Friday run.

And while he was less than two minutes ahead for most of the action, he would end up beating local contender Federico Villagra by 3m14s at the finish line.

The latter was four seconds clear of Stacey for the runner-up spot - with the duo followed by Jaroslav Valtr, who looks set to score his first top-ten Dakar finish on his fifth attempt.

Just as on Thursday, Gerard de Rooy was not among the fastest - but the IVECO driver completed the stage within five minutes of the lead and was ahead of main rival Ayrat Mardeev, only tenth.

De Rooy will kick off the final stage with a lead of 1h13m10s, while second-placed Mardeev has a gap of half an hour over Villagra.

Standings after Stage 12

Pos.	No.	Driver	Truck	Time/Gap
1	501	Gerard de Rooy Moises Torrallardona Darek Rodewald	IVECO	42h128m59s
2	500	Ayrat Mardeev Aydar Belyaev Dmitriy Svistunov	Kamaz	1h13m10s
3	514	Federico Villagra Jorge Perez Companc Andres Memi	IVECO	1h43m35s
4	516	Ton van Genugten Anton van Limpt Peter van Eerd	IVECO	2h17m10s
5	506	Hans Stacey Serge Bruynkens Jan van der Vaet	MAN	2h28m57s
6	529	Pascal de Baar Martin Roesink Wouter de Graaf	Renault	2h58m04s
7	502	Eduard Nikolaev Evgeny Yakovlev Vladimir Rybakov	Kamaz	3h43m11s
8	533	Jaroslav Valtr Josef Kalina Jiri Stross	Tatra	3h53m10s
9	510	Peter Versluis Marcel Pronk Artur Klein	MAN	4h02m03s
10	518	Pep Vila Roca Xavi Colome Marc Torres	IVECO	4h38m55s