"Very happy for the team"

Dakar 2019 | Stage 9 | Pisco > Pisco
January 16 ^th 2019 - 15:18 [GMT -5]

Giniel De Villiers dutifully fulfilled his role as a water carrier for Nasser Al-Attiyah to finish stage 9 in third place, 7'15" behind the overall leader and winner of the next-to-last stage of the rally. The South African, now eighth overall, will again be at the Qatar's service tomorrow.

"Yeah, very happy for the team. A really great job for Nasser. In the first part we just followed him very closely, just in case. Then we got to some fesh-fesh and I could not follow so close, obviously, because of the dust, so I dropped back a minute and a half or so. Then there were like one or two tricky waypoints where we turned a little bit and I think we lost a little bit more time. For sure, not an easy stage today. Some really difficult crossings in the dunes and some waypoints in some really tricky places. No problem, going well and one more day to go.

Obviously, the main thing is to get Nasser to hopefully win the race for Toyota Gazoo, but it's not over, we still need to do 110 kilometres tomorrow, but we'll try our best tomorrow. The most important thing is to get the win for the team."