Communique 5 - Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Monday 10 January 2000
Leg 5 Bobo Dioulasso (Burkina Faso) - Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)
Total distance: 762km - Special Stage: 485km

Mitsubishi Still In Front As Dakar 2000
Races Through African Tropics

After what should be the last day in the tropical forests of West Africa, Kenjiro Shinozuka and Dominique Serieys still head the leaderboard of the Paris-Dakar-Cairo Rally in their Team Nisseki Mitsubishi Ralliart Pajero/Montero. At the finish of Leg 5 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso today, January 10, the Japanese/French Mitsubishi crew was six minutes clear of their nearest competitor, Frenchman Jean-Louis Schlesser in a buggy.

Also driving a "special", Stephane Peterhansel of France moved up to third place today in his Mitsubishi-powered Mega Desert after French pair Jean-Pierre Fontenay and Gilles Picard dropped back to fourth when they got lost momentarily. Fontenay had been providing live commentary to a Television crew when he lost concentration and took the wrong route. When he regained the correct road, he got stuck behind Belgian driver Gregoire De Mevius who was nursing his overheating Nissan along at just 120 km/h and there was no way of overtaking on the narrow, twisting clay tracks.

The fifth leg provided another high-speed adventure across hard-baked clay tracks through the jungle, thus handing the advantage to the buggies with their lightweight and higher tops speeds.

Said rally leader Shinozuka: "Today was even faster than yesterday and the roads were much more suited to Schlesser’s buggy. We’re still keeping ahead, and the car is very good".

Schlesser won today’s leg but only by eight seconds from Peterhansel’s Mitsubishi-engined machine, with Shinozuka third fastest and Germany’s Jutta Kleinschmidt, co-driven by Swede Tina Thorner, fourth in her Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero despite getting lost briefly, moving her up to sixth overall.

Japanese driver Hiroshi Masuoka and his German navigator Andreas Schulz lost a good deal of time when they suffered a puncture on their Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero and were passed by three slower cars when they stopped to change the wheel. Nevertheless, the Mitsubishi pair still holds fifth overall after stage five.

Carlos Sousa of Portugal is holding onto seventh place in his Mitsubishi Strakar/L200, while fellow Mitsubishi driver Miguel Prieto of Spain is making a storming comeback, jumping 20 places a day after his long delays on leg two when he dropped to 109th. The Pajero/Montero driver is now back up to 32nd overall after scoring seventh fastest today.

In the T1 category for standard cars, Brazilian Klever Kolberg is beginning to make his presence felt by taking fourth place overall in his Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero after a slow start to the event, while Frenchman and fellow Mitsubishi driver Guinot is now in fifth.

Tomorrow, the remaining competitors will head across the border from Burkina Faso into Niger with a 733km leg, of which 526km will be driven competitively. As they head north west, the tropical forests will give way to Sahel, with more desert-like conditions, long, fast Plateaux and the first sand dunes of the rally as they cross the fabulous pink dunes along the edge of the River Niger near the leg finish at Niamey.

POSITIONS ON STAGE 5

OVERALL CLASSIFICATION AFTER LEG 5