Volkswagen team faces up to toughest Dakar challenge yet

January’s Dakar Rally promises to be the toughest yet for the Volkswagen works team and its squad of TDI-powered Race Touaregs, for the 30th running of the world’s toughest motorsport event will be longer and more arduous than ever.

Special stage distance has been lengthened by a third over last year, to 5,736 km (3,562 miles), with the treacherous sand dunes of Mauritania set to provide much of the drama during the 16-day trek from Lisbon, Portugal, to the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

Volkswagen will field four works cars – for Spaniard Carlos Sainz, South African Giniel de Villiers, Germany’s Dieter Depping and American Mark Miller – while a fifth Race Touareg will be run by customer team Lagos and driven by Portugal’s Carlos Sousa. Volkswagen is bidding to become the first manufacturer to win the legendary classic with a diesel car.

Newly crowned FIA Cross-Country Rally World Champion Sainz says the 2008 Dakar will be his most arduous yet: ‘It will be longer, tougher and more difficult. We expect lots of sand dunes and there will be two cross-country legs after which we will be allowed no assistance from mechanics.’

Volkswagen Motorsport Director Kris Nissen added: ‘At almost 6,000 timed kilometres we are in for a very long event, and many days will be spent in the dunes of Mauritania. It will be a great challenge but also a great strain: the drivers and co-drivers will be spending many hours in the cars on the long stages, which means the team will not be able to start work on the cars until late in the evening.’

He believes that the team has a good chance of success following recent tests and promising results in the UAE Desert Challenge in early November, in which Volkswagens finished second and third: ‘We drove a lot on sand on this event and it confirmed that we have achieved notable improvements on this type of terrain.’

‘In Mauritania the rally will return to locations that have not been used on the rally for more than a decade,’ said Dirk von Zitzewitz, who will co-drive for de Villiers. ‘The organisers have announced a number of so-called erg crossings - sand stages that have not previously been driven - and the famous Nega pass, near Kiffa, as special challenges. More than once in the past the outcome of the rally was decided on such types of stage.’

The Volkswagen team’s Race Touaregs, powered by 2.5-litre TDI engines delivering 280 PS, won ten of the 2007 Dakar’s 14 special stages but failed to prevent Mitsubishi claiming a seventh successive overall victory. The Mitsubishi team, led by three-time victor Stéphane Peterhansel, is likely to be Volkswagen’s chief opposition once more. Volkswagen last won the Dakar in 1980, when Swede Freddy Kottulinsky drove his Iltis to victory.

The Dakar Rally gets underway on 5 January.