Local Navara privateers to Dakar

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South African's Mark Corbett and Francois Jordaan will make history when they line up in their South African-built Nissan Navara for the start of the 2008 Dakar Rally in Lisbon, Portugal on January 5.

They will be the first South African privateers to compete in the car section of the Dakar Rally and will be flying the South African flag on their Century Property Developments Navara in which Corbett contested the 2007 Absa SA Off Road Championship.

While it will be Corbett's debut in the world famous marathon event, Jordaan will be making his second appearance.

Jordaan co-drove fellow South African Giniel de Villiers to seventh place overall in the 2004 event in a Nissan Hardbody built by Nissan South Africa and entered by Nissan Japan. It will be the first time the two, both born in KwaZulu Natal, have competed together.

Corbett?s Navara will be one of six competing in this year's famous off road marathon event - arguably the toughest test of man and machine in the world of motor sport - which have been developed and built by Nissan Motorsport in Midrand, Gauteng.

The Century Property Developments Navara will be part of a three-Navara team entered by the privateer Team Overdrive of former Dakar star Gregoire de Mevius of Belgium.

Norwegian adventurer Ivar Erik Tollefsen and Briton Quin Evans will be driving Tollefsen's Navara that they have been campaigning in this year's Absa South African Off Road Championship, while the third Navara will be in the hands of multiple Polish rally champion Krzysztof Holowczyc and the experienced World Rally Championship co-driver Jean-Marc Fortin of Belgium.

Corbett, accompanied by boyhood friend and longtime off road racing co-driver Juan Mohr, entered the UAE Desert Challenge in Dubai in November 2006, a round of the FIA Cross Country Rally World Cup.

They surprised the regulars, who included works Mitsubishi and Volkswagen drivers, by winning the prologue. They led briefly on day one before dropping back to fourth and were lying fifth on the final day of the six-day event when they crashed 100 km from the finish.

Corbett is a 33-year-old building science graduate of Wits University who has competed in local off road racing on two wheels and four since he was 14 years old.

He is a past winner of the legendary Roof of Africa Rally (in a Jimco spaceframe special in 2000) and the 1 000-km Toyota Desert Race in 2000, which forms part of the Absa SA Off Road Championship. He is the managing director of Century Property Developments.

Jordaan, 53, is a three-times national off road co-driver champion, with Giniel de Villiers in a Nissan Hardbody in 2001, with Hannes Grobler in a Nissan Navara in 2006 and again with Grobler in 2007 (although Grobler finished second in the drivers? championship). He is the owner of a geological exploration company.

Corbett will be accompanied to the Dakar by his own support crew consisting of father Ernest, founder and chairman of Century Property Developments and a successful off road racer in his own right, Julien Hardy, Rudi Balzer (who is his co-driver in the SA championship) and Juan Mohr.

The 2008 Dakar Rally starts in Lisbon on January 5 and ends in Dakar, Senegal on January 20. There is a total of 15 racing stages over the 16 days (there is a rest day in the Mauritanian desert on January 13) with two in Portugal, four in Morocco, eight in Mauritania and the final stage in Senegal.

The total distance competitors will cover is 9 273 km, made up of 3 530 km of liaison stages and 5 736 km of racing stages.

There will be a total of 570 competing vehicles, consisting of 245 motorcycles (40% rookies), 205 cars (18% rookies), 100 trucks and 20 quads. There are 50 nationalities represented among the competitors, almost half of whom are under 40 years of age.