Dakar Rally news

Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart rewrote the history books by claiming a seventh successive victory in the punishing 2007 Dakar Rally. The success was a record-breaking 12th win in the team’s 25-year history of competing in the world’s toughest and most famous off-road rally. The French crew of Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret won the event for the third time in four years.

"I was very nervous on the last big African special stage yesterday and I just drove very slowly on the beach this morning," said Peterhansel. "It was not necessary to do the show for the crowd and the television on the last stage.”

For the last six days of the rally, Mitsubishi controlled proceedings through careful team management, a professional approach by each of the drivers and thorough car preparation to record victory without the need to take a single stage win.

Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart management dedicated the Dakar win to the memory of co-driver Henri Magne, who lost his life in a tragic accident during last June’s Rally of Morocco. His wife and adopted child joined the team for the podium at Lac Rose. Magne won the Dakar Rally on two occasions and was third overall last year with Joan ’Nani’ Roma.