2012 Rally Dakar

NISM0_SKYLINE
Possbile spoiler alert, since we here in America get some delayed Dakar coverage.

Here's something we'll hear about for the rest of the rally:

http://jalopnik.com/5875541/are-the-french-discriminating-against-nascar-driver-robby-gordon

Since Robby's involved, I know it's not just going to go away baised off his attitude. I've never been a Gordon fan, but since he's an American in the Dakar, I want him to win. The article states that he can keep running and if the decision is over turned, in around 2 weeks, he may win if can manage it. And hearing that reminded me of the NationWide race where he was DQ'd on the last few laps, but kept going and "won" and did a donut with the real winner. Should be interesting to see how it comes out now since they've gave Robby a reason to be Robby :lol:. I have a feeling he's going to run hard the rest of the rally, if he stays, and if he gets close to Peterhansel at some point it should be interesting.
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I want him to win too. badly. He won some Sprint cup and Indy car races though, and his Indy car highlight is running out of fuel leading the Indy 500 with 14 or so laps to go.
 
It would be cool seeing a privateer driver win too. I looks like the suspension came down too on the night he won the stage. :lol:, it's funny, Peterhansel can get away with hitting a guy on a motorcycle, but Robby has a little air intake, which he claims is for his tires, and he gets DQ'd. When this first happened, Robby wasn't on the overall listing on the Dakar website. When I look now, he's back in fourth two hours back, who knows.
 
Gordon had a broken CV boot. A podium finish is probably his highest hope.

Al-Attiyah quitting was a quitter's move.
 
Robby is starting to annoy me now. He has an illegal car and is racing under appeal and comes out with things like this.

"Minis are for girls, because we beat them by 20 minutes. It was a great stage, with big dunes and the car's fast,"

These were the Mini's that took over an hour out of him in 1 day earlier this week

"We schooled these boys. I'm pissed. I'm pissed at Stephane and I'm pissed at Nani for challenging my character about being a cheater and today I kicked their asses. I'm going to prove something every day for the rest of the rally. We're going to win every special from here home."

Nani and Peter didn't accuse him of cheating (well at least not in any televised interviews) they wondered how he was going so quickly but never said anything like that guy in the orange hummer has a space shuttle under the hood, also he's been bragging about how he is going to win in 2013, how many years has he been running these Hummers? He's only ever finished on the podium once.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
Robby is starting to annoy me now. He has an illegal car and is racing under appeal and comes out with things like this.

"Minis are for girls, because we beat them by 20 minutes. It was a great stage, with big dunes and the car's fast,"

These were the Mini's that took over an hour out of him in 1 day earlier this week

"We schooled these boys. I'm pissed. I'm pissed at Stephane and I'm pissed at Nani for challenging my character about being a cheater and today I kicked their asses. I'm going to prove something every day for the rest of the rally. We're going to win every special from here home."

Nani and Peter didn't accuse him of cheating (well at least not in any televised interviews) they wondered how he was going so quickly but never said anything like that guy in the orange hummer has a space shuttle under the hood, also he's been bragging about how he is going to win in 2013, how many years has he been running these Hummers? He's only ever finished on the podium once.
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Yeah, Robby is a bit cocky, and has an extremely short temper.
 
Over the years I've seen that happen many times, not much you can do once that back end goes up, just gotta hold on! Least they could keep going without too much trouble. :lol:
 
GOTMAXPOWER
Robby is starting to annoy me now. He has an illegal car and is racing under appeal and comes out with things like this.

"Minis are for girls, because we beat them by 20 minutes. It was a great stage, with big dunes and the car's fast,"

These were the Mini's that took over an hour out of him in 1 day earlier this week

"We schooled these boys. I'm pissed. I'm pissed at Stephane and I'm pissed at Nani for challenging my character about being a cheater and today I kicked their asses. I'm going to prove something every day for the rest of the rally. We're going to win every special from here home."

Nani and Peter didn't accuse him of cheating (well at least not in any televised interviews) they wondered how he was going so quickly but never said anything like that guy in the orange hummer has a space shuttle under the hood, also he's been bragging about how he is going to win in 2013, how many years has he been running these Hummers? He's only ever finished on the podium once.
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Kinda the point I was trying to make earlier, I've watched they guy through my many years of watching all racing series. Anytime he enters it's nothing extra-ordinary. I'm just glad you expanded and said exactly what you feel because Gordon always thinks the rest of the racing world is out to get him. I've seen it for years with him in Nascar and Dakar. I still say even if he won next year or whenever, he was never good enough to beat Carlos Sainz.
 
But, his car isn't illegal, he got banned for nothing. He gets in trouble for a supposed "extra air intake", which turned out to be nothing, but Peterhansel gets away with hitting a motorcyclist. Which, can be deemed an illegal move, but didn't. I'd think if you're going to ban someone over a possible, cheat, you should penalize someone for hitting a motorcycle that wan't even moving. Robby totally proved his point. If he wasn't "banned", I'm sure he'd be leading, he would of one the first stage by 20 minutes, but helped his teammate. I seems a little weird that he gets caught after he wins his first stage this year, and threatens the all mighty Peterhansel.
 
NISM0_SKYLINE
But, his car isn't illegal, he got banned for nothing. He gets in trouble for a supposed "extra air intake", which turned out to be nothing, but Peterhansel gets away with hitting a motorcyclist. Which, can be deemed an illegal move, but didn't. I'd think if you're going to ban someone over a possible, cheat, you should penalize someone for hitting a motorcycle that wan't even moving. Robby totally proved his point. If he wasn't "banned", I'm sure he'd be leading, he would of one the first stage by 20 minutes, but helped his teammate. I seems a little weird that he gets caught after he wins his first stage this year, and threatens the all mighty Peterhansel.
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It's just like the Prost-Senna ordeal in the 80s. The organizers are French so therefore they favorite Peterhansel
 
Yea, that's what I was thinking, I just didn't want to come out and say it's all because of the French. Robby will be back next and be sure, he will do whatever it takes to win it.
 
NISM0_SKYLINE
Yea, that's what I was thinking, I just didn't want to come out and say it's all because of the French. Robby will be back next and be sure, he will do whatever it takes to win it.
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Yeah. If you hit an MX rider you should get in trouble.
 
Exactly. It's even worse when the guy is standing next to his bike with a spectator in the water. I mean, there's a lot that could of happened, but we never heard about it again, until Robby brought it up again.
 
I've always had a bit of respect for Robby Gordon, multi-discipline owner driver and all.. but I do think he's been pretty childish over this. A possible technical infringement on a car, and an accidental collision between vehicles in two different classes, are totally separate things for the organisers to deal with. I'm suprised there is no time penalty for hitting another/driver rider, but then it would be virtually impossible to police correctley, and open to abuse.. either way, Robbies opinion on it is totally irrelevant, and it's more likely that IF the organisers favoured Peterhansel over Gordon, then it's probably more to do with Gordons childish attitude, then Peterhansel's nationality.

As it happens I'm glad the Mini's did so well (BMW Power :D), but to be honest, I was rooting for Holowczyc, who finished 10th.
 
nitrorocks
It's just like the Prost-Senna ordeal in the 80s. The organizers are French so therefore they favorite Peterhansel
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You can't just jump to that conclusion, that's a bit of a dellusion. Senna & Prost deal with Jean-Marie Balestre has a back story and history to it, so there is evidence to make the claim. This I don't think so.

Gordon has been trying this for a long time, and only made it to the podium once. He's good in score but Dakar is nothing like that, and when you have greats like Carlos Sanz to beat you better have more experience than Nascar and SCORE. This year was different of course because Sanz wasn't there, but when you look at Peterhansel's record and Gordon it isn't too hard to see who would be the better bet. I don't doubt Gordon might have cheated same goes for Peterhansel, and I agree both should be DQ. However, from watching this race I don't think he ever really had it.
 
Well, I wouldn't call Sainz a great in a Dakar sense. He only won it once. And experience is good yes, but it doesn't mean you're going to win. Like Nasser, he just raced a little bit of rally here and there with pretty decent results. Back in the '80s Jacky Ickx won the Dakar, he barely ever drove off road. You look at Robby and he has 7 SCORE champoinships, he's won the Baja 500 3 times and the 1000 three times and some random rally win in Europe with the Hummer. When it comes to exprience, Robby really isn't that far behind. Yes, Robby has an attitude, he's American, but when Peterhansel and the Roma, randomly, just say he's cheating even though they don't even know, would piss me off too. He's coming in to one of the hardest races in the world with a car he built himself that can keep up with a multi-million dollar full backed team.

On another note, Coma didn't win :grumpy:.
 
NISM0_SKYLINE
Well, I wouldn't call Sainz a great in a Dakar sense. He only won it once. And experience is good yes, but it doesn't mean you're going to win. Like Nasser, he just raced a little bit of rally here and there with pretty decent results. Back in the '80s Jacky Ickx won the Dakar, he barely ever drove off road. You look at Robby and he has 7 SCORE champoinships, he's won the Baja 500 3 times and the 1000 three times and some random rally win in Europe with the Hummer. When it comes to exprience, Robby really isn't that far behind. Yes, Robby has an attitude, he's American, but when Peterhansel and the Roma, randomly, just say he's cheating even though they don't even know, would piss me off too. He's coming in to one of the hardest races in the world with a car he built himself that can keep up with a multi-million dollar full backed team.

On another note, Coma didn't win :grumpy:.
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I agree too. Also I've always had respect for Robby because he is backing his own Cup team, Trophy Truck team, shortcourse trucks (Pro2 and Pro4) Shourtcourse Buggy (Unlimited) and Dakar teams with not as much money as Mini or Toyota.
 
MatskiMonk
I'm suprised there is no time penalty for hitting another/driver rider, but then it would be virtually impossible to police correctley, and open to abuse.. either way,
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Nikolaev was disqualified from the truck race for failing to provide adequate support following a collision (he landed on a Toyota).

If he (Peter) had been kicked out Gordon would still have missed out on a podium because he drove so erratically.
 
Well out of 14 stages, he won 3 and was in the top 3 for 4 of them. Placing in the top 3 for half of the stages for driving too hard is pretty good. As for NASCAR, a private team isn't going to keep up with teams that have millions of dollars and drivers who do nothing but NASCAR. One of the reasons Robby does NASCAR is because of the money. If it wasn't for the ban, he would of been a threat to win. Before he was banned, at stage 9, he was 6 minutes behind Peterhansel. Stage 10 and beyond he dropped because he wanted to prove a point and just went all out, and Peterhansel made him crash :sly:.
 

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