Robby Gordon Wins the 1st special of the 5th Stage in Vezsprem

Robby Gordon won the 1st special of the 5th stage in the Central Europe Rally today. He piloted his Monster Energy/Toyo Tires Hummer to victory with a time of 1 hours 41 minutes and 4 seconds. That puts him about 2 and a half minutes behind the leader Carlos Sainz

BJ Baldwin had a great day as well. He finished the special 8th overall with a time of 1 hour 46 minutes and 30 seconds. There were some minor navigation problems on his end that set him back a couple of minutes. He was 5 minutes and 26 seconds behind Gordon.

The 2nd Special of the day is about to begin. I will update you on the results of that when Robby hits the finish line…

The overall win is no longer in sight for Team Dakar USA


The team worked tirelessly all last night to have the Hummers race ready for this morning’s start. I saw the guys this morning and they looked beat, but their hard work will pay off. Robby went on to win the 1st special of the 5th stage this morning. The moral back in the pit was sky high when we received the official results from the ASO. The 2nd leg of race was up in the Vezsprem Mountains making it very tight and technical. Perfect terrain for the 4 wheel drives. Robby was optimistic; his main focus was to put time on Carlos Sainz, which started behind him. Around Kilometer 36 Robby’s chance for the overall win came to an end. I’ll let him explain what happened with this quote and video:

"After the special win we were pumped up because we had fought our way back into this thing. The only thing left to do was to go hard and keep pace with the leaders. I'm very disappointed after the second special. We flew a decent size jump and the truck just came down wrong on the rear and damaged the rear hub. We finally managed to get it fixed but at that point it was too late. Our chances on this rally are over but I'm really proud of this effort. We are competing against the best off-road teams in the world and they knew we were here! On the bright side BJ has done a fantastic job in the Vanguard Hummer. Both Hummers have really performed very well,” explained Gordon.

The 1st checkpoint had Robby beating Sainz by 40 seconds. Who knows what would have happened if that Hub wouldn’t have broken. This Rally has been teeter tot, up and down, up and down. On the bright side like Robby said, BJ has done an awesome job in his Rally racing debut. We will race again tomorrow in the same course backwards. Who knows we might score a few more specials and possibly stage wins!