• Team's race truck continues to make excellent progress
• Two Land Rover Discoverys support team's endeavour to finish the toughest race in the world
• Land Rover also providing all‑terrain vehicle support for the Red Bull Desert Wings team
• Race and support vehicles have already covered over 8000 km demanding off‑road terrain 

Antofagasta, Chile, 16 January 2014.  The race truck of Race2Recovery, the group of injured soldiers and civilian volunteers competing in the 2014 Dakar rally, has completed Stage 10 of the race with only three stages remaining.  The team, sponsored by Land Rover, made history in 2013 by becoming the first disabled team to ever complete the Dakar.  This year, the team was forced to retire its two race cars but has since focused all its efforts on its race truck in order to achieve the team's end goal of completing its second consecutive Dakar.  So far, 46% of the entrants into the 2014 Dakar have withdrawn from the competition. 

The truck's crew has been racing day and night through Argentina, and now northern Chile and has travelled across 8,000km in ten days of racing.  Driver Mark Cullum, co‑driver Chris Ratter, and amputee soldier Daniel Whittingham even spent a night in the dunes on Stage 9, helping rescue other teams, before arriving back at the team bivouac in the early hours of the morning to complete the stage. 

The bivouac is set up at the stage end each day by Race2Recovery's support crew, who are providing mechanical, technical and logistical expertise on the team's adventure.  Added to the support crew are the two drivers and two co‑drivers of the team's race cars, now assisting the team's progress after they themselves retired from the race.  Each day, the support team travels in convoy along road routes in a fleet of Land Rover Freelander and Discovery vehicles plus a support truck.  The support team drives for an average of 5‑6 hours per day and has travelled over 5,000km to date, including a 706km journey over the Andes where they climbed around 4000m.  Each support vehicle carries three members of the crew, with drivers rotating whilst the team mechanics, who often work through the night, catch up on a few hours of sleep. 

This year, the Race2Recovery support crew has also benefitted from access to the Red Bull Desert Wings bivouac after Land Rover became the official vehicle supplier to the team, providing five Land Rovers including Defender, Discovery, all‑new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport with the latter actually following the demanding route of the Dakar.  Race2Recovery's crew has been welcomed on a daily basis into the Red Bull Bivouac providing Race2Recovery with additional resource and infrastructure. 

Speaking from the team's bivouac in Antofagasta, northern Chile, race truck co‑driver Chris Ratter said: "It's been extremely challenging to keep our race truck in the Dakar but the team is doing exceptionally well.  Some of the terrain we're racing over is very unforgiving, through deserts, mountain ranges and over some of the biggest sand dunes you can image.  The key to our continued success in the race is all down to the forward planning done by the team.  Our support team have been extremely well‑prepared.  For example, Phillip Gillespie, has been helping prepare the road book ahead of each day's stage.  That's a massive help to me as sometimes we only have a few hours between finishing one stage and starting the next.

"Our driver, Mark Cullum and the other member of our onboard crew, Daniel Whittingham, have been doing a fine job and it's vital that the three of us continue to work together to get through the next three stages.  When you're cresting a huge sand dune, sometimes all you can do is hang on and put your faith in the driver!  Thankfully, I've been rallying for over twenty years so it takes quite a lot to scare me." 

Race2Recovery operates to the motto 'beyond injury, achieving the extraordinary' and has raised over £250,000 for military charities including Tedworth House and Help for Heroes.  The team's lead sponsor, Land Rover, has also confirmed that it will support the team's entry into the new Defender Challenge by Bowler rally series that will launch in the UK in spring 2014.  Race2Recovery can use this competition to gain further experience ahead of future Dakar challenges as well as using it as an ideal platform to train up new recruits. 

People wishing to find out more about Race2Recovery should

visit www.race2recovery.com and www.uk.media.landrover.com

Click here for a video titled Dakar Rally 2014 ‑‑ Race2Recovery ‑‑ Team Update ‑‑ 07.01.14 with Alistair Weaver http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBKze7K42dg

‑ENDS‑

CONTACTS

PR CONTACT:  Jim Williams, Fast Track   jim.williams@fasttrackagency.com  07814 068349

LAND ROVER PR CONTACT:  Kim Palmer kpalmer@landrover.com  07795 666 169

IMAGE CAPTION

IMAGE 1:  Race2Recovery's T4 truck competes in the 2014 Dakar rally

IMAGE 2:  The Race2Recovery race truck crew of Chris Ratter, Daniel Whittingham and Mark Cullum pose with their truck during 2014 Dakar rally. Credit: Gaucho Productions

IMAGE 3:  Race2Recovery vehicles, including one of the team's Land Rover support vehicles (far right) at the 2014 Dakar Rally.  Credit: Gaucho Productions

IMAGE 4:  A Red Bull Desert Wings team Range Rover support vehicle travels across ice flats at the 2014 Dakar rally

IMAGE 5:  A Red Bull Desert Wings team Range Rover Sport support vehicle travels across ice flats at the 2014 Dakar rally 

NOTES TO EDITORS

2014 Race2Recovery Team:

About Land Rover

Land Rover is the lead sponsor for Race2Recovery.  Since 1948 Land Rover has been manufacturing authentic 4x4s that represent true breadth of capability across the model range. Defender, Freelander, Discovery, Range Rover Sport, Range Rover and Range Rover Evoque each define the world's 4x4 sectors. Land Rover products are currently sold in approximately 180 global markets. 

About the Dakar Rally:

The Dakar, an incomparable human adventure whose history has been built in the finest deserts of the planet, is amongst the major sporting challenges of our era. Both a race and a test of navigational skills, it involves not only the leading riders and drivers of the rally raid discipline, but also amateur competitors, who often take part to make their dream come true or to rise to a challenge, behind the handlebars or steering wheel of their bike, quad, car or truck. Fifty nationalities come together each year for this mixture of competition and solidarity whose television coverage is seen by a billion viewers in 190 countries. 

The Dakar Rally (or simply 'The Dakar', formerly known as 'The Paris‑Dakar') is an annual Dakar Series rally raid off‑road race, organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation. The race originated in 1978, a year after racer Thierry Sabine got lost in the desert and decided that it would be a good location for a regular rally event. Originally, the rally was from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. However, due to politics and other factors, the course, including origin and destination, has varied over the years. After cancellation of the rally in 2008, the 2009 Dakar Rally was run in South America (Argentina and Chile) ‑ the first time the race took place outside of Europe and Africa. It has stayed in South America since 2009. The race is open to amateur and professional entries with amateurs typically making up about 80% of participants. 

Despite its name it is an off‑road endurance race, called a rally‑raid rather than a conventional rally ‑ the terrain the competitors traverse is much tougher and the vehicles used by teams and individuals are true off‑road vehicles rather than the modified on‑road vehicles used in rallies. The majority of the competitive special sections are off‑road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass and rocks among others. 

The Dakar 2014 course, which stretches over 9000km of the world's toughest terrain, begins in Rosario, Argentina on 5th January, with the course winding north through Argentina, into Bolivia and finishing in Valparaiso, Chile on 18 January.

www.dakar.com

About the Defender Challenge 

The Defender Challenge by Bowler is a one‑make rally series operated by Bowler Motorsport designed to act as a feeder series to the annual Dakar rally and other global rally competitions. 

Continuing the strategic partnership announced in 2012 between Land Rover and Bowler Motorsport, the Defender Challenge will see competition‑prepared Land Rover Defenders being used in a one‑make, seven round, rally series taking place across the UK. The series will be regulated by the MSA (Motor Sports Association) and each Defender Challenge car will be FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) compliant enabling competitors to compete internationally. 

The Defender Challenge will provide both experienced competitors, and those with no prior competition experience, a platform to gain the experience required to compete in world‑class rally events. For those with no or little experience, the series will offer a complete solution for gaining a licence, training and development and ultimately, competition experience.