De Rooy relieved to overcome treacherous conditions

De Rooy, in his Iveco Petronas Powerstar truck, had been the first to leave the Tupiza bivouac, just after taking his first win during Thursday's stage. The Dutchman is first of the 48 trucks still in the race, which has been one of the most difficult since the Dakar's arrival in South America.

Opening the track was not a problem for de Rooy, however, despite the big difficulties in navigation reported by everybody during the tricky fifth stage. Still, at the finish line, he confessed to having stopped a couple of times to looking for the right road.

“It was not so easy navigate today," said de Rooy. "Perhaps it was the most difficult stage from the start of this Dakar. We stopped a couple of times, but the roadbook was perfect and it has been enough to follow it to find the right way."

But navigation was not the only problem: “The stage was very hard and slippery, with river beds and dunes," he continued. "At the beginning the track was dry, but later with the rain it started to become difficult.

"The first part of the stage, more or less the first 60km, was over the mountains on a tricky track with a lot of dry rivers to cross and in at the same time with some flooded lines. Suddenly we went in a kind of crevasse and for a moment we thought it was impossible to get out. But after one minute we were lucky and managed to get out of this big hole."

After having suffered a lot of punctures, de Rooy said the tyres worked well on Friday for his Iveco Petronas team: “I have to say that, considering slippery the ground was, we maintained a good pace. Our tyres had perfect grip and that gave us the possibility to attack, and I don't think my adversaries did the same."

Indeed, de Rooy took the stage win by 11m58s over the best of the Kamaz drivers, Edouard Nikolaev, and 14m04s over third-placed Ayrat Mardeev, another driver for the Russian marque.

It means de Rooy is now in command of the overall standings with a lead of 2m23s over Nikolaev, the first of three Kamaz drivers behind the Iveco Petronas.