Photography provided by Andreas Lampka with BMW Group

The 35th copy of the Road Rally is classic to endurance racing as it remains the most savage professional race around the globe. With Paris-Dakar 14 stages and 4 classes (bike, quads, vehicles, vans) of competition that collect 448 vehicle entries competing over 8,500 kilometers. It all began in Peru and concluded in Chile.

The final parade and the prize-giving rite staged on a podium set up old-town as the 35th edition of the Dakar Rally ended. The parade included all of the groups who where able to complete the race that began on the 5th Jan in Lima, Peru and ultimately road into the Chilean capital to complete the 8,500 km raceon. Joining the celebrations was the Husqvarna Rallye Team by Speedbrain, one of the key protagonists this year. This has been the 2nd official collusion in the Dakar for the Husqvarna Rallye Team by Speedbrain. The endurance competition has been an excellent show of all the work achieved by the squad’s experts at the Dakar, as well as in the factory in Varese, Italy. A superb effort was given also by the private riders on board their Husqvarna TE044s who were ableto tackle and achieve the challange.

Klaus Allisat, president Husqvarna Motorcycles: “A huge thanks” to the entire Husqvarna Rallye Team by Speedbrain; to the 4 factory riders, Joan, Alessandro, Paulo and Matt, to Berti Hauser, and eventually to everyone who has worked so conscientiously in Varese and backstage in Stephanskirchen. Husqvarna has finished first after many stages and we should be really pleased with the result especially in consideration that’s only the 2nd attempt at the Dakar. It’s been a great 2012 season of rallies for Husqvarna. We won the Pharaons with Barreda on the TE244RR by Speedbrain and also had a great result in the Morocco Rally where we were second. We had a goal for the Dakar; to compete and win for we did well. We achieved victory 4 stages out of 14, and gained twelve podium places, and this is a dream come true for everybody at Husqvarna.

Berthold Hauser, Dakar Project leader in BMW: “First of all I would like to say how pleased I am that everybody in the team was able to stay healthy and make it to Santiago, which is not very a cake walk in any race that’s so challenging, not only on the hardware, but also on the participators. Although we didn’t reach our original target, we’ve learned a good deal from this race. It is a particular rally where we get info unique from any other setting. We’ve reviewed our notes and commited to memory every detail in order to get better for the next competition. I am already feeling the desire and drive to think ahaed for the next Paris-Dakar event. The fundamentals are now all in place; the team, the bike and the riders. That’s the reason why I’ve such high appreciatation of the achievements and hard work Wolfgang Fischer and his team have achieved”.

Munich/Santiago de Chile. It seems momentum will never subside. The French duo of Stephane Peterhansel and co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret have won the Dakar Rally 2013 in a MINI ALL4 Racing in a repeat of last year’s success. With their overall time of 38:32.39, the lead pairing of the privately-entered Monster Energy X-raid Team from Trebur, Germany passed over the finishline in Santiago de Chile 42:22 minutes ahead of their nearest pursuers in the general classification. For Peterhansel, his 2nd win in the MINI ALL4 Racing was also his career 11th win in the Dakar.

“This is an impressive victory and I’d like to congratulate him for MINI not only to Stephane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret, but also to Sven Quandt’s entire X-raid Team,” enthused Dr Kay Segler, Senior Vice President MINI Brand Management. The win of the MINI ALL4 Racing team last year was without doubt a shock for many individuals. But now it is obvious to all that this was not by chance. Anyone who comes home first after 8,600 kilometers (approx. 5,300 miles) in the planet’s hardest rally has completed something superb. We are wonderfully proud to count these fantastic rivals as part of the MINI family.

As last year, the X-raid Team was a repeated strong contender in the Dakar Rally MINI 2013. Peterhansel took control of at the top of the classification after only two stages and protected his lead all of the way to the finish. The racing in the pack included the pairing of Leonid Novitskiy and Konstantin Zhiltsov in another MINI ALL4 Racing, who finally completed the Dakar Rally 2013 in 3rd place.