De Villiers: Inaccurate roadbook behind Dakar navigation "lottery"

The roadbook, which maps out the route for competitors, is handed out to participating teams by the organisers in the evening prior to the day of the relevant stage.

For the 2017 edition, the rally's organisers have targeted an increased focus on navigation – and de Villiers, who was among many to get lost and drop significant time in the first half of the rally, believes the roadbook has made navigation gains and losses too random.

“They've made the navigation a bit more challenging, but I think the main factor has been [that] the roadbook has not been very accurate,” he told Motorsport.com.

“It's been quite bad up until now, and that's caused a lot of the confusion. And, you know, hopefully they can sort that out, because it needs to be more accurate for them to make the navigation difficult.

“Because then the good guys that navigate well will still come out on top. At the moment, it is a bit like a lottery, it's not quite how it should be.”

Current position disappointing

De Villiers has endured a difficult first half of the rally, and is currently sat eighth overall, an hour and eight minutes down on rally leader Stephane Peterhansel (Peugeot).

“Obviously I am disappointed with where we are in the standings at the moment,” said de Villiers. “[Friday] we had a very bad day again, getting lost - it's a bit of a lottery with the navigation, but the other guys seem to get less lost than we do.

“I think only [Mikko] Hirvonen was more lost than us yesterday. But that's not ideal, and we had some other problems. I thought we should've been up there, fighting for the lead, the same as Nani [Roma] is now at the moment, he's obviously doing a great job.

“So we'll try and support him and see if we can keep it together in the fight at the top. Still a long way to go, second week is a tough week, it's not over yet.”

Work to do at altitude

Agreeing with fellow Toyota driver Roma's comments that the Hilux could not match the Peugeot 3008DKR at high altitude, de Villiers said the deficit was to be expected.

“That's what we were scared of and that's what we expected. It's not difficult to understand, it's a basic physics law of power-to-weight," he said.

"The Peugeot is 400kg lighter than us, and with the same amount of power.

“You get to altitude, where all the power is less, traction is not a problem - which we have a little bit of an advantage with at sea level. But it's not a problem [at altitude] because you can hardly wheelspin it.

“So the Peugeot is really good at altitude, and I think we've still got work to do. But it's always going to be difficult with the normally-aspirated engine.”