And they’re off – for six days of intense racing. Leaving Cairo this morning, all those taking part in the Rally of the Pharaohs were in no doubt : today, their worst enemy would be the heat. With temperatures around 47°C on the trail, the teams were suffering from the conditions at the finish point. This evening, Benoît Rousselot is currently 4th overall, the second T2 car, just two minutes behind his team-mate Serguey Sukhovenko. Isabelle Patissier’s vehicle suffered from vapour-lock, and had to stop for around forty minutes before rejoining the race. Before these problems, the World Champion had made a careful start.

The first leg, between Cairo and Baharija, quickly brought the competitors up to speed. This 299 km special stage was mostly made up of straight sections, interspersed with particularly tricky bumpy areas. There were no major difficulties as far as the navigation was concerned, but today’s overwhelming factor turned out to be the heat, with temperatures around 47°C. Trying conditions for teams and drivers alike.

In these conditions, the hottest since the start of the season, Isabelle Patissier and Thierry Delli-Zotti suffered from vapour-lock. They lost over forty minutes, but their morale is still high. « We started off at a cautious pace this morning. The stage quickly proved to be tricky, with a number of bumps and holes, and any deviations from the route could have been extremely costly. Around 40 km from the end, while I was talking to Thierry, the microphone failed, quickly followed by a total engine cut-out. First of all, we thought it was a problem with the circuit-breaker, but then Thierry found out that there was no fuel pressure at all. The reason : a vapour-lock. It was lucky that Thierry was there, as he was able to get us going again, even if we did lose a lot of time with this problem. I must admit that it was very, very hot…”

The performance of the day belongs to the two Nissan Pathfinder T2 vehicles entered by Team Dessoude, which are currently lying 3rd and 4th overall. Russian driver Serguey Sukhovenko is just under two minutes ahead of Benoît Rousselot. While Isabelle Patissier suffered from the heat, this was Benoît Rousselot’s first experience of this sort of conditions. The Nancy-based driver had never been so hot in his life… « We started off at a reasonable pace, without pushing too hard. I was a bit apprehensive, as we hadn’t been in the sand since Tunisia, but as it turned out, the dunes were no problem, as the sand held us well. André Dessoude wanted us to drive carefully, which is what we did. To be quite honest, this stage was not particularly interesting from a driving point of view, but there were lots of places where you could have made a mistake. Around 15 km from the finish line, I was shattered, totally out of fuel – the driver, not the car. I was not feeling that good when we reached the bivouac, and I went round to the medical tent, like many others. I did not eat enough this morning, and with the heat, I ran out of energy. Everything is now OK, nothing too serious. I have realized just how physically demanding rally raids can be, compared to traditional rallies. The ‘heat’ factor really has to be taken into account here. This is my first real day of competition in this sort of heat since I started off in rally raid competitions. »

As for Fabian Lurquin, Benoît’s navigator, he spoke of his day in the oven: «We started off at a very relaxed pace. We overtook Chabot in the first hundred kilometres. Halfway through, Serguey (Sukhovenko) caught up with us. We stayed behind him, but he was going a bit too fast for our taste. At about 50 km from the finish, we caught up with him again and finished together. There were no navigation problems, and the car was OK. Over the last 15 kilometres, it was the driver who appeared to be tiring…»

In the T2 classification, Benoît is two minutes behind Sukhovenko while Chabot is over 33 minutes adrift.Tomorrow will consist of 360 kilometres of special stage, between the Baharija oasis and Sitra Road. The gaps could become more pronounced. And like today, the heat will play a major role.