I hadn't realized until now that Ricardo Leal Dos Santos actually had won a stage at the Dakar in '12 as a Mini driver so its good to see him driving a proper car in a Nissan now.
Entered in his first FIA cross-countrry rally in '15 behind the wheel of a T1 Nissan Navara, Dos Santos picked up a fifth place finish at this past weekends Baja Espana. A great initial outing and from what I am reading he does plan on contesting Dakar '16. Dos Santos had a successful Dakar '15 finishing 25th overall and the highest Nissan in the event. The Portuguese driver has teamed with a Brazilian co-driver and should be getting in some practice in other cross-country rallies the remainder of the year. Hoping for an even stronger result in Dakar '16... http://www.bajaaragon.com/eng
For the first time in about a year I actually raced the "race" truck. It was up at the Team O'Neil Rally School in Dalton, NH where the SCCA put on its first stage rally race in some ten years. Many of my fellow entrants were racers I've known for years through the SCCA Rallycross program, including a couple of my prior codrivers.
The weather conditions were fantastic...it was dry and warm and my codriver this day was Tim Meunier who also ran as a driver and codriver in my little Mexican adventure last year. I was admittedly dramatically out of practice and my times showed it. I was pleased by my constant improvement from stage to stage and by then end of the day I felt like some of my pace had begun to return, though far from where I would want to be.
The mileage run on the day was pretty minor--under 20 miles--but it was a good shakedown for the truck to ensure that everything is still up and running and working properly. For the day we finished 20th out of 25 and finished every foot of every stage which would place me 16th on the day if the stage DNFs were viewed as true DNFs and not just a time penalty. Regardless, its a good first step to getting back and used to driving at speed. We'll see what's next.
I saw the original article a while ago and now they have come out with Part 2. While I love women in bikinis (who doesn't?) it was cool to see this article with all of these hard core women in off-road.
I have actually met two of these women personally--Judy Smith and Nicole Pitell-Vaughn and both are extremely impressive in their own rights and accomplishments.
Both articles are worth reading for realizing the depth and breadth of female competitors in off-road sports/racing. I just with they had included perhaps a female stage rally racer in here as well--perhaps Nathalie Richard?
