Dakar Rally podium finish for Team De Rooy with all four trucks in the top ten on Goodyear truck tyres

Gerard De Rooy took 3^rd place in the Truck Class of the 2019 Dakar Rally with all four of the Petronas Team De Rooy Ivecos finishing in the Top 10 on standard Goodyear Offroad ORD tyres.

Petronas Team De Rooy was the only team to see all its trucks finish.  Dutchman Gerard De Rooy two-times winner of the Dakar and winner of the Africa Eco Race 2018 finished 3rd, Argentinian Federico Villagra finished 4^th, Ton van Genugten, also from the Netherlands, won the final stage and took 7^th place with Maurik van den Heuvel, the third Dutch driver in the team, finishing 10^th. 

1^st and 2^nd places in the Truck Class went to Russians Eduard Nikolaev, who has won the event three times before, and Dmitry Sotnikov. Two of their four Kamaz trucks finished.

The four Team De Rooy Iveco Powerstar trucks raced on regular Goodyear 375/90R22.5 Offroad ORD tyres.  As well as racing on Goodyear tyres, Petronas Team De Rooy Iveco ran Goodyear OMNITRAC mixed service tyres on their service trucks, which followed the team on the rally. 

“It is not the podium place we hoped for, but it is and remains a podium position,” said Gerard De Rooy.  “If you see what has happened in ten days of competition, up to and including the last day, then we certainly can’t complain.  With the fact that we are also the only team with all four of our trucks finishing and all in the top 10, I can only be very satisfied. This was one of the toughest Dakars to date and with 70% of it on sand, tyres were a critical element.”

“We congratulate Gerard de Rooy and his team on their success, which was achieved with regular Goodyear 375/90R22.5 Offroad ORD tyres produced in our Luxembourg plant.  The hard work they have put in, supported by our engineers in finding the optimum set up for the vehicles, has certainly paid off and our ORD tyres have proved the outstanding performance they offer in the toughest conditions imaginable” said Benjamin Willot, Director Marketing Commercial Tyres Europe at Goodyear.”

The 2019 Dakar took place exclusively in Peru, covering 5,000 kilometres of which about 70% was on sand, and included 10 special stages over 3,000 kilometres.  The rally started in Lima on January 6^th.  More than 330 trucks, cars and motorcycles raced to Tacna on the border with Chile before returning to Lima for the finish on January 17^th. 

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Original article from truckandfeight.co.za