Gianni Lora Lamia Paris-Dakar-Cairo 2000 Stage Bamako-Bobodioulasso Nissan Team Dessoude Giletti

Gianni Lora Lamia Paris-Dakar-Cairo 2000

Helicopter Aerial Footage, Stage Bamako-Bobodioulasso

Gianni Lora Lamia - Roberto di Persio

Nissan Patrol GR Y61 4.5L T3 Carbon Body

Nissan Team Dessoude Giletti Yarns

16th Cars Scratch
16th Cars Overall

After the excellent result, 14th place overall, in the previous year's edition, the Granada Dakar 1999, this time, on January 6, 2000, we started from Dakar for the race of the new millennium, really very well, taking a good pace right from the start and that day my co-driver and I decided to attack, and hunt down the leaders for the top position, I still remember today that note with the annotations of the gaps of the times from the leaders stuck on the dashboard of our car near the navigation instruments, that meant that the hunt was beginning, and I also remember as if it were yesterday, the car number 276 of Henry Pescarolo 4 times winner at the 24 hours of Lemans that started 3 minutes behind us, that was also a sign that we were certainly really very fast.

We felt that it would be the right day, and so we pushed our Y61 to the limit, in the 286 km of the special stage, reaching top speeds close to 200 km/h, on the fast tracks of Mali that from Bamako in Mali passing at times under majestic and wonderful trees and that took us to Bobodioulasso in Burkina Faso. That day will always remain an unforgettable day, a day of big game hunting, that day, we challenged Dakar winners, F1 drivers, winners of the 24 hours of Lemans and WRC world champion drivers, despite our car, although very powerful, but in any case inferior to the cars of the leaders Mitsubishi and Buggy Schlesser, at the end of that fantastic day we found ourselves a handful of minutes from the leaders finishing the stage in 16th place and at the same time in 16th place overall in the general classification. Really not bad for a young boy who came from a small Italian mountain village, but what I was doing, I owed it to all the people who believed in me, to my family to my father, to my mother and to my little sister and especially to that wonderful and unforgettable person who was Mr. Emilio Giletti who had believed in me since the first day we met, the day I asked him if he wanted to help me, that day Mr. Giletti answered me asking me why I had waited so long to ask him to help me to challenge the Paris Dakar.

In the following days we continued to chase and hunt the leaders obtaining results of absolute importance in the top ten, until the luck unfortunately abandoned us, because of a stupid and simple power generator of the car that left us in the dark and speechless, in the middle of the track that took us to Niamey in Niger for the rest day, depriving us of a sure position in the top ten or even who knows in the top five upon arrival in Cairo, after the big technical problem that had pushed us to the bottom of the general classification, we fought hard every day breathless, finishing the stages always together with the leaders, recovering the lost time with an incredible and stratospheric progression, finishing the race one more time in a decent position, once again the best Italian driver and crew, but unfortunately far from that goal and result that was surely in our hands since the start of the race if luck hadn't abandoned us so harshly.

Infinite thanks to the guys from DPPI, to the operator of the gimbal steadycam of the helicopter, and for sure to the brave helicopter pilot if it was possible to make this exciting fantastic and unforgettable video, whenever the helicopter flew over us accompanying us, we never felt alone, but with angels flyng above us.

Gianni Lora Lamia

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