After the disaster that was the Dakar for Nissan vehicles--all top 4 vehicles went down with mechanical issues either self induced (Mironenko's roll over) or from continues shoddy engineering (Lavielle's fuel leak, I mean come on!! How many times can one team almost burn down their vehicle!!) and only two Nissans finishing the race at all (in 30 and 31st place, both Pathfinders) I perhaps held out hope that Jacky Loomans would perform well at what has become the "also-ran" Dakar, better known as the Africa Eco Race. Run at the same time as the Dakar and with far less hype, many fewer competitors and weak competition other than Jean-Louis Schlesser I thought that Loomans and his SA built Navara (virtually identical to the ones that performed so well in the '09 Dakar and the ones I had high hopes for in the '10 Dakar) could perhaps salvage a solid performance in the sands of Morocco, Mauratania and Senegal. Not to be...well...kind of not to be...
Out of the 11 competitors and 11 stages, Jacky did manage to win 4 stages...but a clutch problem put him well out of contention for the overall win which as expected went to JLS and his buggy. The organizers say this race will continue in '11 but I doubt it. With only 11 car entries, 3 bike entries and a handful of truck entries in '10, without the "Dakar" name and top level competition I can't imagine participants and sponsors are likely to come back...
Africa Eco Race '10
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