Sébastien Loeb and his co-driver Fabien Lerkin, driving the Prodrive Hunter SUV, won the 8th round of the Dakar Rally Raid. This is the second success for the Bahrain Raid Xtreme crew in the 2023 marathon.
The past few days have not been smooth sailing for the nine-time world rally champion, but the Franco-Belgian duo made every effort to gradually recover. In addition, Loeb was lucky today: Factory Audi team driver Carlos Sainz set the best time on Sunday, but was subsequently fined for speeding.
At a certain distance there was a limit of 30 km/h, but there Audi number 207 drove at a speed of 40 km/h. This added 5 penalty minutes to Sainz’s result and moved him into the third line of the day’s protocol, passing Nasser Al-Attiya ahead.
The rider from Qatar remains strongly in the lead in the general classification, but Loeb has already moved up to fourth place, although he still loses almost two hours to Al-Attiyah. But judging by the way he rode today’s section, Sebastien isn’t giving up and intends to fight to the end.
“This time we did a good job on the fast part, everything went without a hitch,” he said. – Only once did we leak the wheel and it had to be replaced, but otherwise everything was fine.
The stage was not that easy, but we tried to get through it as best we could, and the navigation was okay. I am satisfied.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
