RECORD-BREAKING TEAM REPSOL MITSUBISHI RALLIART CLAIM SEVENTH SUCCESSIVE DAKAR RALLY VICTORY

Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart rewrote the history books by claiming a seventh successive victory in the punishing 2007 Dakar Rally after the final 16km special stage, near Dakar, in Sénégal on Sunday.

The success was a record-breaking 12th win in the team’s 25-year history of competing in the world’s toughest and most famous off-road rally. The French crew of Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret won the event for the third time in four years in their Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution and beat their team mates and defending champions Luc Alphand and Gilles Picard by a margin of just seven minutes 26 seconds, after 15 days of bruising competition across Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Sénégal.