MOTORSPORT: Aussie heroes emerge in Dakar Rally

Never heard of Geoff Olholm and Steve Riley? Well, they're Australians who have just conquered the world's toughest motorsport event, the Dakar Rally -- an awesome feat

Volkswagen's Race Touareg 3s fill top three places
Australia has two new motorsport heroes, Geoff Olholm and Steve Riley, who have finished the torturous Dakar Rally in South America at their first attempt -- as Volkswagen celebrates a hat-trick of victories.

Olholm, of Cairns, and Victorian Steve Riley, driving a BMW-based Rally Raid UK four-wheel drive finished the 15-day, 9600km event that is the pinnacle of off-road racing 27th overall in the car section.

A crowd reputed to be one million people greeted the Dakar finishers in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, at the weekend.

Olholm's partner, Jenny Tonkin, has told the Cairns Post newspaper after speaking to the driver that he "just seemed to have this huge flood of emotion".

And she said co-driver Riley had proven to be "a real bush mechanic when needed".

"He was able to 'Band-Aid' the car and get it through to the end of the stages so the mechanics could work on it," she said.

Australia's more fancied crew, Bruce Garland and Harry Suzuki, were forced out halfway through the Dakar when Garland suffered a spine injury as their Isuzu D-Max ute landed heavily in the Chilean dunes.

They had finished 11th in 2009, were around the top 20 in the first half of this year's rally and were aiming for a top 10 finish.

Meanwhile, the Cairns Post report on Olholm and Riley's triumph is here.

Volkswagen won the Dakar for the third straight year, continuing its unbeaten run since the event moved to South America from the traditional Europe and Africa, as its diesel, 2.5-litre, in-line five-cylinder, 310-horsepower Race Touareg 3s scored another one-two-three sweep.

Its winning driver combination in this 33rd running of the marathon was Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar and Timo Gottschalk of Germany.

Its 2009 winners, South African Giniel de Villiers and German Dirk von Zitzewitz, were second this year, with last year's victors, Spaniards Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz, third after winning the most stages.

Volkswagen led outright every day and won all but one of the 13 stages -- Sainz-Cruz seven, Al-Attiyah-Gottschalk four and de Villiers-von Zitzewitz one.

The other stage victory went to French legend Stephane Peterhansel, who finished fourth overall for the second year in a row in a BMW X3 with countryman Jean-Paul Cottret as his co-driver.

Sainz now has a record 24 stage wins in the Dakar, surpassing Peterhansel's 23.

Al-Attiyah won at his sixth Dakar start and his second for Volkswagen, after the bitter contest with Sainz last year. He is the first Arab to win the Dakar.

"I'm absolutely delighted to have been the first Arab to win the world's toughest desert rally," he said. "I reached my greatest goal thanks to the world's best cross-country rally car and the best team in this sport... We'll party like there's no tomorrow."

Jubilant at its Dakar hat-trick, Volkswagen described the challenges of the event as "winding gravel roads, soft and deep desert sand in the unrelenting Atacama Desert, navigationally demanding sections through labyrinth-like canyons and washed-out river beds as well as spectacular river crossings".

It said the "compact dimensions and low overall weight" of its Race Touareg 3s compared with its rival BMW's X3 "proved to be the best overall package for the third time in succession, suiting both the WRC-like tracks and the extreme dune crossings".

Volkswagen motorsport director Kris Nissen said the Dakar victory hat-trick was "a historic performance achieved thanks to perfect teamwork, exceptional driving and navigational skills and more specifically thanks to superior technology".

"It was without a shadow of doubt the toughest 'Dakar' that we have ever contested, and also probably the best organised," Nissen said. "We proved that the Race Touareg 3 is the world's most reliable and strongest cross-country rally vehicle. This is the result of years of hard work."

Volkswagen has not had a single technically-related retirement in cross-country rallying in four years.

The great Sainz, world rally champion in 1990 and '92, said he was "more than satisfied, all in all" with this year's third place.

"I think that my co-driver Lucas Cruz and I did a good job and therefore were rightfully fighting for victory for a long time," he said. "Unfortunately two bad days and several mistakes cost us any chance of overall victory, but this is the Dakar Rally -- you always have to be alert.

"I'm delighted for the entire Volkswagen team, which truly deserves this one-two-three finish, and to have contributed to it. Everybody worked hard for this win."

BMW had to content itself with fourth and fifth places, with Poland's Krzysztof Holowczyc and Belgian co-driver Jean-Marc Fortin in the top five for the second time in three years, ahead of another Volkswagen driven by American Mark Miller and South African Ralph Pitchford.

Nine-time Dakar winner Peterhansel -- six times on motorcycles and three times in Mitsubishi Pajeros -- said small mistakes on his part may have cost the BMW X-raid team. He said he had already pinpointed improvements that could be made for next year.

"This was not the result we maybe expected at the beginning," Peterhansel said. "But the car is at the finish and that is good. The motivation was big at the start but we made too many mistakes.

"We had a lot of punctures and we lost the road some times. At the end it is not perfect that we were not able to do better.

"Maybe there is a small step between us and our rivals. It is possible to follow the speed but we need to be perfect and this time we made too many mistakes.

"This was not more difficult that the African Dakars but, for sure, it was the hardest of the three Dakars we made in South America."

Peterhansel's co-driver Cottret said that "driving through the (Chilean) fesh-fesh is one particular area where we need to look at".

"There were large sections of this thick powder dust and it hides all sorts of problems," he said. "You are going fast and totally unaware that there can be rocks just under the surface and this is how punctures can happen."

X-raid team director Sven Quandt had mixed feelings.

"We had many ups and downs along the way, but we finished quite well -- even if it was not quite what he had expected," Quandt said. "Maybe our main rivals were too strong this time, but we now know that there is no-one challenging behind us.

"Now we have to work hard over the next year to prepare."

Quandt said the new Mini All4 was in a very good position when it was "withdrawn" -- Frenchman Guerlain Chicherit crashed it in a demonstration run on the mid-event rest day.

Quandt reckoned "it may well have been in fifth or sixth position at the end".

"We will develop that car further," he said. "We now have to look into what was causing the problem of the punctures.

"The setting up of the suspension was not 100 per cent good, so we need to address that."

Where there's Smoke there's fire
NASCAR star Tony "Smoke" Stewart got himself into strife with some fisticuffs at his final Australian dirt-track outing at the weekend at Sydney Speedway -- or what to many will always be Parramatta Speedway.

Stewart was questioned by police but not charged and allowed to leave the country on schedule as the NASCAR season start at Daytona nears. More here.

And a preview of Australian NASCAR driver Marcos Ambrose's season with his new team, Richard Petty Motorsports, is here.

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