DAKAR, Senegal—Nine-time French national ski champion, Luc Alphand froze out this year's determined—and fast—competition to hand his Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart teammates their 11th victory in the 28th Dakar Rally on January 15, 2006. Alphand and co-driver Gilles Picard clinched a record-breaking 11th win for Mitsubishi and the sixth triumph in a row. Teammates Joan ‘Nani’ Roma and Henri Magne and Stéhane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret finished third and fourth overall.
  The overall win was the first for Alphand—last year's runner-up—and the second for his French co-driver Gilles Picard, who had won the Dakar with fellow Frenchman Jean-Pierre Fontenay in 1998.
  Alphand took the outright lead between Bamako in Mali and Labé in Guinea, when former leader Peterhansel had some bad luck with a tree. Despite fierce pressure from second-place South African driver Giniel de Villiers, Alphand took few risks over the closing three days of the 14-stage event to record a winning margin of 17 m 53 s after the final timed section near Dakar was cancelled.
  “My first attempt at the Dakar Rally ended with a seat in a helicopter and I never wanted to be in that position again,” said Alphand. “It's a fantastic feeling to win the Dakar. I experienced many highs and lows in my skiing career, but this is so different.”
  Spaniard Nani Roma had joined the Mitsubishi team for his first event in October 2005 and finished sixth on his Dakar debut in a car last year. On this occasion he and Andorra-based co-driver Magne finished a superb third overall in a second Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution.

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