A 4×4 Iveco Powerstar and two 4×4 Iveco Trakker rally trucks are heading to South America to defend the brands win in the 2016 Dakar Rally.
For the seventh consecutive year, Iveco will be the official sponsor of Team PETRONAS De Rooy Iveco and provide them with vehicles, engines and spare parts.
Dutchman Gerard De Rooy will lead the team with co-pilot Moi Torralardona in the Iveco Powerstar.
Ton van Genugten and co-pilot Anton van Limpt are competing in the second truck, an Iveco Trakker, with the supporting Trakker vehicle driven by Wuf van Ginkel and Bert van Donkelaar
The vehicles use Iveco Cursor 13 engines with up to 900 horsepower specially engineered by FPT Industrial for the rally.
Seven additional vehicles – six Trakker units and one Daily – will complete the Iveco team line-up, providing support and assistance.
South America is again hosting the Dakar Rally for it’s 39th running.
Starting on January 2nd from Asunción, in Paraguay, the race route winds through Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina, covering more than 9 thousand kilometres to finish in Buenos Aires on January 14th.
On November 24 and 25, all the European competitors embarked their vehicles in Le Havre, France, for a crossing that will take around a month. The Iveco trucks entered the ship alongside the other European competition, assistance, logistical support and press vehicles.
Since 2009, the process of loading the vehicles onto the ship at the second largest port in France has become an important rite of passage and, to a degree, has come to represent the first stage of the rally.
