While France’s Stephane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret took the overall lead in their BMW X3 after winning the third special stage of the Dakar Rally in Argentina on Monday, Volkswagens fill the next three places.

Spain’s Carlos Sainz and Frenchman Michel Perin (Volkswagen Race Touareg) finished the 182-km stage from La Rioja to Fiambala in second place in their Race Touareg TDi, 5min 44sec behind Peterhansel, and are second overall, 4min 33sec in arrears.  Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah and his German co-driver Timo Gottschalk are third overall in their diesel-powered Touareg, followed by team-mates Mark Miller of America and South African off road champion co-driver Ralph Pitchford.

Al-Attiyah finished third on Monday’s special stage, 10min 1sec behind Peterhansel and just 13 seconds ahead of VW teammate Miller. In the overall placings the Qatari is third, 7min 31sec behind the leader and Miller is 13min 12sec in arrears.

It was not a good day for defending champions Giniel de Villiers of South Africa and German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz, who saw their chances of a second successive Dakar win in their VW Race Touareg disappear when they were forced to stop after 50 km with technical problems and wait for their assistance team.  They eventually finished 31st after losing over two hours to the leaders and are now 22nd overall and 3h 00m 46s behind Peterhansel.

Brazil’s Mauricio Neves and Clecio Maestrelli, making their first appearance in the VW team on the Dakar, dropped back to 21st overall after finishing Monday’s stage in 13th place, 1h 06m 04s behind Peterhansel.

The stage saw the 131 car competitors tackle the toughest challenge so far in this year’s second Dakar to be held in South America, with scree passages, soft sand and the first high dunes keeping the average speed of the leading cars for the 182 km down to only just over 60 km/h.

“It was difficult,” said Ralph Pitchford.  “The real Dakar started today.  We lost some time at the beginning, but then we had a good stage and encountered no problems in the sand dunes, which were soft and not easy.”  
 
Stage four on Tuesday follows an early border crossing from Argentina into Chile over the Andes mountains, at an altitude of more than 4 000 metres.  Temperatures will drop as the competitors descend into Chile for the first time.  Awaiting them is a 163-km special stage in the Atacama desert during which they can acclimatise themselves to several days of sand driving.

The start of the stage has been delayed by 1h 30min and shortened by 40 km to enable late finishers of stage three, who only reached the overnight bivouac last night, to safely negotiate the high altitude crossing of the Andes.