TEAM REPSOL MITSUBISHI RALLIART BIDS FOR SIXTH SUCCESSIVE DAKAR RALLY WIN WITH STRONG FOUR-CAR LINE-UP

French pairing of Peterhansel and Alphand joined by Roma and Masuoka
Japanese manufacturer bids for sixth successive win and 11th in 24 years
The Mitsubishi Motors factory team has entered four cars in the 2006 Dakar Rally, as it bids to become the first team in history to win six successive Dakar rallies and clinch a record-breaking 11 overall victories in 24 years. Mitsubishi entered the event for the first time with an unofficial entry in 1983.

The Mitsubishi team has not been beaten on the grueling African event since the Millennium and has entered a team of four of the latest MPR12 versions of the all-conquering Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution for the 16-day event, starting in Lisbon on New Year’s Eve and finishing in Dakar, Sénégal, on Sunday, January 15th, 2006.

Spearheading the team’s challenge are the defending champion Stéphane Peterhansel and the Japanese twice former winner Hiroshi Masuoka. Peterhansel teams up with regular co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret, while Masuoka is reunited with Frenchman Pascal Maimon, with whom he won the event in 2002.

Completing the official team line-up are the Spanish driver Joan ’Nani’ Roma and last year’s French runner-up Luc Alphand, with their respective co-drivers Henri Magne and Gilles Picard.

Peterhansel won no less than six Dakar titles during an illustrious career as a motorcycle rider and became only the second individual in the 28-year history of the event to win outright on both two and four wheels when he won the Dakar with Mitsubishi in 2004. He repeated the success last January. Masuoka, meanwhile, won outright in 2002 and 2003 and finished as the runner-up in 2004.

"Jean-Paul and I are quietly confident," said Peterhansel. "We have a good track record together on the Dakar and will be well prepared. It will not be easy by any means. Experience tells us that the Dakar is such an unpredictable event. The route is complicated, but we are both well motivated this year and looking forward to the start."

"The new car is very strong and fast and I think it is the best of its kind in the world," said Masuoka. "I am very happy to be in this team. Every year team technicians improve the performance of the car. Now I feel that I can win the Dakar Rally for the third time.

Frenchman Luc Alphand was a former World Downhill skiing champion before he became involved in cross-country rallying. He was the first driver in history to win a stage of the Dakar in a diesel-engined car, before joining the factory Mitsubishi team in 2004.

’Lucho’ went on to finish second overall on his first Dakar Rally with the Mitsubishi team in 2005 and followed up this result with an outright win in April’s Rally of Tunisia. His last competitive outing was a test session in October’s Baja Anta Da Serra 500-Portalegre in Portugal, where he took a stunning victory and beat a quartet of factory Volkswagens in a two-year old, MPR10 version of the Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution.

"The main enemy is the desert," admits Alphand. "My first Dakar was a real disaster, but I and am getting used to it. Everything is possible this time. We are four drivers with the same car and we all want to win. I finished second last year. In 2006, I will have even more experience. I hope to do a good Dakar. With a little luck, who knows?"

Spaniard Roma joined the Mitsubishi Motors Repsol Team last autumn and went on to finish second in the Qatar Baja, sixth on the Dakar and fourth in both the Patagonia-Atacama and Morocco rallies, before taking a maiden win in July’s Baja Spain.

He again teams up with Andorra-based co-driver Henri Magne, one of the most experienced of all the cross-country co-drivers and the winner of the 2003 FIA World Cup and the 2004 FIA European Baja Cup.

""When I was young my mother gave me a present - the Yearbook of the Dakar," said Roma. "I started to follow the race. It was a dream to think about winning and it was incredible to win on the bike in 2004. Now I just hope that I can win the Dakar in a car."

"This year our main competitor has made good progress," said MMSP’s Team Director Dominique Serieys. "They have learned a lot from us and about the FIA regulations. We made two small mistakes in South America and Morocco this year, but we won in Tunisia and Dakar. We won 13 of the last 15 races and my feeling is that we are going out to win again. It will be tough. But Africa and the tracks of the route will be the main competition for us. We are strong and motivated to win."

"I have been impressed by the team’s positive attitude and meticulous preparations for this year’s Dakar Rally," said MMSP’s President Isao Torii. "Mitsubishi has achieved a remarkable run of success on this event in the last five years and I have every confidence that the team is capable of winning the race again for a sixth successive year."

The 2006 Dakar Rally will start for the first time in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon and the opening timed special stage will take place on New Year’s Eve during the run south to Portimao on the Algarve coast.

Scrutineering and documentation take place in Lisbon on December 28th-30th. On New Year’s Day the capacity entry of cars, bikes and trucks will head south towards Spain and the Mediterranean sea crossing to Morocco.

Over the following 15 days the capacity entry heads deep into Africa and through the depths of southern Morocco, across the treacherous Mauritanian Sahara to a rest day in Nouakchott.

From there the route heads further across the Mauritanian wilderness en route to more traditional Black African stages in the Republic of Mali, Guinea Bissau for the first time since 1996 and finally into Sénégal. The traditional finish will take place beside Lac Rose, near Dakar, in Sénégal on Sunday, January 15th.

There will be only limited GPS points made available to competitors, stages without GPS and at least two Marathon stages where service assistance is not permitted.

TEAM REPSOL MITSUBISHI RALLIART - 2006 DAKAR RALLY ENTRIES

Stéphane Peterhansel (F)/Jean-Paul Cottret (F) Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution

Hiroshi Masuoka (J)/Pascal Maimon (F) Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution

Luc Alphand (F)/Gilles Picard (F) Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution

Joan Roma (E)/Henri Magne (F) Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution

Mitsubishi Motors continues to make news in motorsports. Its Hiroshi Masuoka, driving for Team Nippon Mitsubishi Oil Ralliart, captured a record seventh victory for the automaker in the famed Arras-Madrid-Dakar Rally (formerly the Paris-Dakar Rally). The victory was especially sweet for Masuoka, who had to settle for second place last year.
  "At the beginning I had a problem with the language," reflected Masuoka. "I needed French to talk to the mechanics. For two-and-a-half years, I worked at a garage with the mechanics. I was very hungry and worked very hard. So now .... I am on top of the world. Mr. Brehmer looks down over me. He helped my program at the start, and I’m sure he is watching now." (Ullrich Brehmer, Masuoka's former team manager, succumbed to cancer in 2001.)
  Mitsubishi Motors vehicles monopolized the top 8 places and accounted for 9 of the top 10 finishers. Last year's champion, Germany's Jutta Kleinschmidt, was runner-up this year with Team Mitsubishi Ralliart. Rally legend and former Dakar winner Kenjiro Shinozuka placed third with Team Nippon Mitsubishi Ralliart, and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Fontenay was fourth. The top four finishers all drove Pajeros (Monteros). Portuguese driver Carlos Sousa drove a Mitsubishi L200 to a fifth-place finish

Mitsubishi Motors celebrates a record-breaking eleventh win in the 2006 Lisboa-Dakar with a 6th consecutive win from 28 Dakar races. What does this mean for Mitsubishi Motors South Africa?

“We feel this illustrates the engineering excellence of Mitsubishi in all their vehicles,” said Robert Black, Marketing Manager, Mitsubishi Motors Division of DaimlerChrysler SA. “We see the expertise gained from 9 000 kms of the harshest of terrain in the most horrendous of conditions being transferred in the building of our cars to be reliable as they have been in Dakar,” added Black.

It is interesting to point out that whilst much accolade is received for the drivers, no winning driver of a Mitsubishi who has subsequently driven for another manufacturer has won. “It is all about man and machine,” added Black.

The Mitsubishi brand values of ‘Passion, Perfection and Performance’, clearly demonstrates the performance and success in rallies and in Dakar. No other manufacturer which builds vehicles that have been tested in such demanding terrains have had the success that Mitsubishi has had.

With its 6th consecutive win and its 11th total win from 28 Dakars, Mitsubishi has proven their winning formula: Correct race strategy, Complete preparation, Commitment of their race team, Total commitment from their mechanics, Engineering design, they have the edge in build quality. Ongoing testing throughout the year has also contributed to these fantastic wins.

Undoubtedly this milestone of “11 wins in 28 Dakars”, once again shows the prowess of Mitsubishi in rallies and this DNA makes up all Mitsubishi’s products.

“We at Mitsubishi Motors would also like to congratulate our fellow South African, Giniel de Villiers on an outstanding performance,” concluded Black.