The first stage of the Libya Rally was neutralized because of a mistake in the gps coordinates. ERTF, the company responsible for the rally GPS-system admits a mistake has been made transferring the waypoints.
The mistake was made when transferring the waypoints from one system to the other. The first system took away the last zero and the second system put it back but in another place.
This caused the waypoints being several hundred meters away from where they should be.
« It would not be fair to make standings based on a misunderstanding, » rally director Gert Duson explained in the briefing at the bivouac in Tan-Tan Plage. « A terrible mistake, » Duson acknowledged. « Some competitors realized we would never put waypoints in such strange places and decided to skip them. Others were afraid of penalties and tried to get them even though they had to enter ravines or climb impossible cliffs. We cannot punish the fast ones for missing waypoints or punish the people who did their best to get as many waypoints as possible. That’s why we decided not to count the results and neutralize the stage. »
For the second stage the competitors will leave in the original order of their starting numbers, like they did in the first stage.