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This is great news for all racing fans! Robby Gordon is to race in the Dakar Rally. He will join the Volkswagen team for the forthcoming Dakar Rally. The 35-year-old American will join three previous Dakar Rally winners - Juha Kankkunen, Jutta Kleinschmidt and Bruno Saby - in a four-car Volkswagen squad on the Dakar, renowned as one of the world's toughest rallies. Though Gordon is better known for his racing exploits, which include sports car class wins in the Daytona 24 Hours and numerous single-seater and stock car victories, Gordon is no stranger to off-road competition and is a two-time winner of the most famous US rally, the Baja 1000.
Gordon and his team-mates will be driving the fearsome four-wheel-drive Race-Touareg, which is powered by a 260 PS, 2.5-litre turbodiesel engine. Successfully introduced on the 2004 Dakar Rally, the Race-Touareg has undergone a year-long test and development programme which culminated in a 14-day, 5000km endurance marathon in Morocco completed earlier this month. The Dakar gets underway from Barcelona on December 31st and, after three short Spanish stages, crosses to Morocco for the start of the rally proper on January 3rd. There are 13 special stages in North Africa, from Rabat through Mauritania and Mali, ahead of the final stage in the Senegalese capital on January 16th. Gordon knows what is required of him: 'Excellent endurance qualities are a necessity,' said Robby. 'The car must be 100 per cent reliable and the driver and co-driver have to fend for themselves…' Endurance is something he has demonstrated: his 1989 win in the Baja 1000 was the result of a solo 16-hour drive. Gordon will be making his Dakar debut, but Volkswagen's other team drivers have enormous collective experience of the event. Finnish driver Kankkunen is a four-time World Rally Champion and was Dakar Rally winner in 1998. He is co-driven by his countryman Juha Repo.
See more about the Rally at the official site:
www.dakar.com.
or Robby's site at:
http://www.robbygordon.com/artman/publish/index.shtml
and this on the Race-Rouareg site at:
http://www.touareg-dakar.com/809.0.html
