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El proyecto se discutió por primera vez en el verano de 2009 y el debut en competición del nuevo MINI All4 Racing estará en manos del equipo de rally francés de Guerlain Chicherit y su copiloto Michel Perin en la 33ª versión del Personal Dakar Argentina-Chile. El evento se inicia en Buenos Aires el día de Año Nuevo y termina en la capital argentina el Domingo, 16 de enero de 2011.

El nuevo All4 MINI Racing forma parte de los siete coches que el equipo X-Raid Dakar presentará para esta edición del rally, pasando a ser el equipo más grande que ha participado en la historia de 33 años de este rally, el  más famoso del mundo del Rally Cross Country y es el tercero de los tres vehículos que participarán bajo los colores del equipo Monster Energy X-Raid.

El MINI estará propulsado por un motor variable de doble turbo diesel que se ajusta a la especificación del 2011-BMW X3 CC y construido en Steyr el mismo lugar en que se construyen los motores diesel de MINI y de BMW. La unidad ofrece una potencia en la región de los 315hp y 710Nm de torque. Este es un aumento en comparación con la potencia  de los BMW X3 2010 CC utilizados en el Rally Dakar para sellar los lugares cuarto y quinto en enero pasado.

“Este es un desarrollo importante en los rallys de cross-country y algo de lo que estamos muy entusiasmados”, admitió Quandt. “Ha habido muy poco tiempo entre la decisión de seguir adelante y el desarllo para el próximo Dakar, pero estamos seguros de que el nuevo MINI All4 Racing será competitivo “recién salido de la caja”.

“En comparación con el X3CC BMW, MINI se caracteriza por un mejor manejo de la longitud total, es más corta y es más bajo. También hemos podido mejorar en muchos otros detalles más pequeños, tales como la reubicación de los componentes más pequeños para bajar el centro de gravedad “.

Quandt confirma que el All4 MINI Racing es 10 cm más corto que el BMW X3 CC, unos 3 cm más bajo que el mismo y tiene 10 cm de reducción de la parte posterior.

El MINItiene de tomas de aire más grande, un capó de una sola pieza y un sistema de ventilación revisado y mejorado mediante una toma de aire frontal y una de techo. La visibilidad en el interior del All4 MINI Racing no está a la par con la BMW X3 CC, la entrada y salida del vehículo para los ocupantes es un poco más difícil, no obstante,  Quandt está encantado con las mejoras generales.

Magna Steyr, bajo la dirección de Hermann Pecnik ha sido responsable del diseño del concepto, los dibujos técnicos y los cálculos, así como los datos de producción y el cumplimiento de estrictas regulaciones de la FIA que rigen el rally cross country.

Los componentes del bastidor y el chasis han sido diseñados por Buren-based GmbH Heggemann Autosport and Faster trabajados completamente el cuerpo completo de carbono-kevlar y siempre bajo la asistencia de Magna-Steyr en la construcción del MINI.

Quandt reconoce que el All4 MINI Racing es más amistoso a la hora del servicio, que el X3 CC, como todos los paneles de la carrocería se puede quitar en cuestión de minutos para dar fácil acceso a importantes componentes mecánicos. La piel del MINI, por ejemplo, se puede cambiar en menos de 30 minutos.

El BMW X3 CC se desarrolló en un período de cinco años y todo este desarrollo ha sido utilizado por el MINI All4 Racing. El nuevo coche se ejecuta completamente en el 2010 y los reglamentos deben ser competitivos desde el principio.

El equipo X-raid también ha confirmado que TUV Rheinland va a apoyar a los tres coches del equipo Monster Energy X-raid de Chicherit, Stéphane Peterhansel y del portugués Ricardo Leal de De Santos en la 33 ª Personal Dakar Argentina-Chile. Con sede en Colonia TUV Rheinland es un proveedor líder mundial en pruebas técnicas y servicios de evaluación, tiene 490 ubicaciones en 61 países y una plantilla de 14.500 personas. La compañía tiene una larga historia en la industria del automóvil y es líder en la inspección automotriz, un servicio prestado en Alemania como en Chile, Argentina, España, Francia y Lituvia.

“El concepto X-raid del MINI se ajusta muy bien a TUV Rheinland, por lo tanto estamos encantados de apoyar al equipo en el Dakar 2011. Muchos de nuestros 2.000 empleados en América del Sur están muy interesados en el Dakar, dice Caio da Silva, TUV Rheinland Jefe Oficial Regional de América del Sur.

El equipo BMW X-raid ahora está haciendo su camino a América del Sur para llegar a tiempo para las verificaciones y la documentación en Buenos Aires el 30 al 31 diciembre.

Siete coches de carreras, dos camiones de carrera (un Man y un Kamaz), ocho camiones de servicio, seis vehículos de asistencia, dos vehículos de prensa y un equipo de alrededor de 80 personas hacen que  X-raid vaya por el título en el Rally Dakar 2011, el más grande equipo de la historia de este Rally.

Fuente: X-Raid Team Press Release
Traducción: rallyglobal.com powered by Rally Raid Media Group

Monster Energy and the BMW X-raid Team have joined forces to create the “Monster Energy X-raid Team”, which will tackle the 3rd edition of the South America Dakar Argentina-Chile. The German team, based in Trebur (near Frankfurt) will field seven cars in the world’s most famous off-road rally, with Monster Energy supporting three of the teams.

Stéphane Peterhansel is the most successful driver in the history of the Dakar Rally. He won the race six times on a motorcycle, before switching to racing on four-wheels in 1999. Partnered by Jean-Paul Cottret, Peterhansel claimed three victories in the Dakar on four wheels and finished fourth overall with the X-raid Team on the 2010 Dakar in South America – his first Dakar with the German team.

The Frenchman has also achieved numerous wins in rounds of the FIA Cross Country World Cup, is a two-time World Enduro champion and took part in the Race of Champions in 2005 and 2006. He joined the X-raid team for Baja Spain 2009 and won the recent Rally of Morocco.

Jean-Paul Cottret switched to co-driving in 1992 and finished second with Peterhansel on the Dakar in 2000. He has won the gruelling event with Peterhansel on three occasions (2004, 2005 and 2007) and has also been successful in numerous smaller Bajas and FIA World Cup rallies.

The Portuguese Ricardo Leal Dos Santos and co-driver Fiùza drive a second Monster Energy-backed BMW X3CC. Dos Santos switched from riding a quad on the Dakar to racing in a car and will take part in his first marathon challenge with X-raid. He finished 14th overall and first privateer in the 2010 Dakar and completed the recent Rally of Morocco with the X-raid team in seventh place.

French Guerlain Chicherit and experienced co-driver Michel Périn crew the third Monster Energy-backed car. Chicherit finished fifth overall in this year’s Dakar Rally, which he tackled as the defending FIA World Cup champion.

The former Extreme Skiing World Champion has been driving for the X-raid team since the 2006 Dakar Rally. He won the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and Transiberico, was ninth in the 2009 Dakar Rally and claimed the prestigious FIA World Cup for X-raid the same year.

Périn was a three-time winner of the Dakar with Frenchman Pierre Lartigue and is one of the most experienced co-drivers in the FIA cross-country rallying discipline. His first victory with the X-raid team came at the Baja Spain 2009 and he was leading the 2009 Dakar Rally with a rival team for several days.

“We are obviously delighted to announce Monster Energy as a key sponsor of the X-raid team,” said a delighted Sven Quandt. “We now have our largest ever Dakar team with seven cars and we are confident that we have strength in depth and experience across the team spectrum.”

X-raid team director Sven Quandt has also confirmed that Argentina’s Orlando Terranova has joined the BMW X-raid team to drive a seventh car alongside the French duo of Stéphane Peterhansel and Guerlain Chicherit, Portugal’s Ricardo Leal Dos Santos, Russia’s Leonid Novitskiy, Poland’s Krzysztof Holowczyc and Germany’s Stephane Schott.

The seven drivers will be co-driven by Portugal’s Filipe Palmeiro, the French duo of Jean-Paul Cottret and Michel Périn, Portugal’s Paulo Fiúza, Germany’s Andreas Schulz, Belgian Jean-Marc Fortin and German Holm Schmidt, respectively.

Terranova, from Mendoza in Argentina, represented the BMW X-raid Team in the 2009 Dakar Rally and was running inside the top 10 before leaving the road and damaging his car in a deep ravine. He was the first Latin American driver to win a round of the FIA World Cup, when he claimed victory in the 2009 Rally of Tunisia.

Palmeiro co-drove Terranova to that Tunisian success in a BMW X3CC and is one of the most experienced Portuguese cross-country participants. He has also worked in the X-raid team with Brazil’s Paulo Nobre and Dutchman René Kuipers in the 2009 Dakar. Last season he co-drove for the Brazilian privateer Guilherme Spinelli and is a regular competitor in the Portuguese Off-Road Championship.

The team recently took part in a five-day test near Zagora before the Rally of Morocco and select team members have just returned from a five-day fitness-training schedule at Tignes in France’s northern Alps.

They used a bivouac for one night and stayed in a chalet next to Lake Tignes at 2,000 metres above sea level for the remaining nights. Team members took part in hiking and running and attended a wellness centre, before walking in snow shoes from 2,100 metres above sea level to the glacier restaurant at over 3,000 metres. “It was a useful way of improving fitness, team bonding and communication between crew members,” added Quandt.

Fuente: www.marathonrally.com | ARTICLE: MR/HS | Powered by Rally Raid Media Group

“He made, you know? As he always does. He made it look good. He made it look easy. But that jump was frickin’ huge. I’m sure driving towards that jump at 105 miles per hour it looked like a toothpick. And it wasn’t steep – it was only angled at 10 degrees – but at 105 miles per hour it probably looked like a Supercross triple jump.”

This was Jeremy McGrath, seven-time Supercross Champion and member of the Greaves Motorsports Monster Energy/Toyota Off-Road teammate, making sense of it all a few minutes after Johnny Greaves – the most prolific driver in close-course racing history – had lofted his 3,800-pound PRO 2WD truck over a mind boggling gap of 301-feet to set a new World Record.

It all began on blustery Friday morning, December 18, 2009, when the Greaves Team, working out of a drafty barn nestled on McGrath’s ranch on the FAR outskirts of San Diego, California, switched out a 500 gear to a 488 gear to conjure up enough top-end out of the 351 cubic inch, 800-horsepower Toyota NASCAR Camping World Truck Series engine to push the beastly Toyota towards the heavens – and more importantly – over a 180-foot gap and towards the 300-foot mark.

It didn’t come easy for Greaves and the Toyota as variables such as wheel spin, revolutions per minute, traction, wind and peak horsepower at the peak time (at the peak of the jump) all had to be factored into a certain ad hoc calculus and tweaked with before the Wisconsin native finally, after several attempts, came up aces high at the 301 mark. An hour later and in a small ranch house, we spoke with a happy and admittedly relived Greaves.

Johnny, it’s been about an hour since you touched down with a new World Record of 301 feet. How do you feel? Do you feel happy? Do you feel like you’ve pulled off a huge accomplishment? What’s going through your head? I’d have to assume it’s a different feeling than winning a race?

Yeah. It’s a whole special prize in itself. You know it’s a whole special prize in itself. You know, it’s all that stuff. I was relived. I didn’t want to stop until I got it done. I really thought we were close enough to get it done. At the same, I didn’t know how many times you could push that button! So, I was relived to finally get it done and I’m totally pumped. I was beginning to think we weren’t going to get it today. I just said, “All right. A couple more shots and this is all she’s got.”

It took you a number of attempts to set the record. What was happening? I know Shaggy (Toyota engine tech) showed me the telemetry of the engine after each jump and we could see the RPMs and overall powerband of the engine was all over the place…

Yeah, what really helped out was that he showed me that when I short shifted that I got my speed up so much earlier and it gave me the speed at the ramp. Before, I was gaining the speed right at the bottom of the ramp and I needed that five miles per hour going up. I was 104 miles per hour at the bottom of the ramp and then I was able to easily able to pick up that one more mile per hour. We needed to be at 105.5 miles per hour and that’s exactly what I hit it at and we got exactly 301 feet. It’s pretty cool when you can work with a group of guys that can tell you “this is the ramp we need and this is the speed we need” and it’s done.

Does this accomplishment feel different from, say, winning a race?

Oh yeah. This is something that, well, who is going to take it away? Nobody for a while. You know a race is a week-to-week thing and it’s great and championships are great, but this is going to go in the record books. It’s super to have this kind of accomplishment.

You went 260 feet while practicing on Thursday. When you woke up this morning, did you feel confident about things or were you nervous at all?

I was a little bit nervous. I woke up and I was going to go ride down there and look at the ramp and talk about what we need to do, but my brother was already in Jeremy’s horse barn tearing the truck apart and getting the gearing right and I was like, “All right, it’s on!” I knew the hardest thing to deal with today was that we moved the ramp back 80 feet, so there was very little room for error or to be able to ease into it. Yesterday I could ease into it. I think the first time I hit the ramp, I hit it at 75 miles per hour and flew 200 feet. But I still plenty of cushion. Today the gap was 200 feet, so anything less than 95 miles per hour and I was going to auger into the face of the landing.

This morning, when you came at the jump at 95 miles per hour and in a wail of 9,200 revolutions per minute – the Truck sounded like a Formula 1 car – to make your first attempt, you lifted a little. How was that first jump? We’re just sort of feeling it all out?

We had a plan. Yesterday we didn’t jump with the hood on because they really act different with the hood. So on the first jump, I definitely lifted. I wasn’t even trying for anything but to get across and get the feel for how the truck was going to react. After two jumps, I really got the feel of how to get the truck to fly and rotate right and how much throttle I needed in the air to keep it somewhat flat with the ground.

So, like a motocross bike, you were using the throttle up in the air to keep the truck balanced. Is that why you used the P2 truck as opposed to the P4 truck?

Yeah, you can really manipulate the flight of the truck with the rear wheel – just like a dirt bike. I’d actually hit the jump and rag the brake a little bit and get it to flatten out. Once I got the feel for that, then I was like, “All right, I’m good. Wide open!”

After you nailed a couple of jumps, were you like, “I think I can do this if I can just time it up right”?

There was a little bit of wind and when we caught the tailwind just right, it would give me that extra three feet each time. The last time I went, I was like, “This is everything she’s got” I got on the road just right, got my speed up just right and was at 105 and a half when I left that ramp. It rotated right so the front wheels would land first and it worked out.

Right from when you dropped the truck in gear, can you explain how the final run went?

Yeah – I don’t even know how long the road was, it had to be three-quarters of a mile long – but the dirt way back in the woods was so soft that first gear was just like “WAAAAHHHH!” I couldn’t get hooked-up. So then I short shifted to second to try to load the power and try and get hooked up. So I just short shifted and just let it eat in third as long as I could. That’s what I did. I had to keep the powerband up over 7000 RPM because these motors like to stay up there. But man, that’s a long way to stay wide open.

What did the jump look like when you were heading at it, pell-mell, at 105 mils per hour?

It looked like a house in front of me. And then when you’d hit it, you were up there so high that I couldn’t even see the ravine or the valley until the truck started rotating down and where the mark was. I knew, “Okay, I’m getting close to the mark.” It was cool. Originally I didn’t want the truck to be that high in the air, but once we did it, it looked so cool I was like, “It looks so cool, we’ve got to be that high.” For anyone to appreciate it, that really shows the distance and the height.

Has any obstacle you’ve come across in racing compared to this?

No. Thrill-wise, this was the greatest thrill. It’s almost scary because it was kind of getting god to me, you know? (Laughter). But I kept saying to myself “You’re not going to get away with this for 10 laps!” So I finally said, “Let’s get it over with and hold it wide open and do it.” It’s the greatest thrill I’ve ever had. You can’t believe how long you’re in the air and just up in there in this massive truck floating through the air.

What if what you did today sets off a jumping war, would you go out and do it again?

I think so. Maybe next year or something. Now I’ll be able to sleep the week before because I’ve done it. I’m not a stuntman or a jump guy, but Monster gave me the opportunity to do this and I took it.

You’re 2009 TORC racing season was pretty up-and-down. Does the record make up for some of the off-song results?

You know I’m the type of guy that likes to win a lot and I had one of those seasons where I didn’t win much. I won three races. But I go back at it and we had a lot of races where we could have won, but we had a new truck. I kind of just wiped that slate clean and this is like my new beginning. This is the beginning of 2010, so look out boys!

Fuente: http://race-dezert.com/
Photos by Simon Cudby
Thanks to Klaus Rasch for sharing this info with Rallyglobal.com