Dakar truck round-up

Gerard de Rooy led home team-mate and Dutch compatriot Hans Stacey to have Iveco fill the first two spots on the podium and end the Eastern European domination of the truck class. 

Russian truck heavyweight, Kamaz, had won the event for the last three years in a row. Iveco's achievement is underlined by the fact that Kamaz, along with Czech brand Tatra, has won the grueling Dakar rally 16 of the last 19 times it has been run. 

His truck hit the SUV of an Argentine competitior, who later admitted he was at fault, but race organisers argued Nikolaev didn't "rendering insufficient assistance" to the stricken machine. Hino finished the truck class in 9th place outright with a 500 Series race truck driven by Teruhito Sugawara. 

While that doesn't quite match the company's claim of "dominance of the global rally circuit" as claimed in a spin-heavy press release, the Hino was the first truck home in the under 10-litre class. It's the 12th time Hino has won the 10-litre class and the 21st year in a row the company has entered and finished the tough event. 

Iveco's Dakar win was the company's first ever. A true patriot could regard the race-winning Iveco as an Australian truck, although that is probably stretching the truth a little. It is a race truck constructed by Dutch race team Team de Rooy which is modeled on the production Powerstar bonneted truck which is unique to Australia and is built at Iveco's Dandenong factory in Victoria. 

While it is said to run a Powerstar cab, the winning truck is a unique rig, using the chassis of the European-made Trakker and many custom components. It is fitted with a Powerstar nose, which did come from Australia, so it's fair for us to claim some of the success. 

The Petronas Iveco team ran five trucks all up and they finished, first, second, sixth, 11th and 16th . All but the race-winner are cab-over models. They are serious four-wheel drive machines built for rallying, not for carrying a load. While the tradition of truck racing at Dakar started with service trucks, these units don't carry anything but the driver, navigator and mechanic. 

The trucks run a red-hot engine based on the 12.9 Iveco Cursor in-line six cylinder. However this turbo diesel is far from standard given it pumps out a whopping 600kW (840hp) at 2200 revs and 3600Nm of torque. That is a fair way above the 373kW (500hp) maximum rating of that engine in Australian Stralis and Powerstar haulers. Would it be nice to have the Dakar-spec engine for a run up the Hume Highway? Although, I wouldn't want to be the one footing the fuel bill. 

While that kind of performance would be handy with a full load, the Dakar Ivecos aren't heavy. The Powerstar tips the scales at just 9300kg which is heavy for a rally car but not for a truck. It also has special race suspension made up of leaf springs and coil springs and chunky race tyres hooked up to an on-board inflation kit which allows the team to drop the pressure for better traction on sand and re-inflate them on the run. 

The team was also thinking of comfort when it developed the race truck, isolating the cabin from some of the harshest bumps with coil springs and hydraulic shock absorbers. This is important given de Rooy was forced to retire after the first stage of the 2011 event when he aggravated a previous back injury.