Carlos Sainz Sr. is considered one of the favorites of the Dakar Rally, the first stage of which takes place today. But already on January 5, the participants of the supermarathon held the so-called “prologue”, the results of which determined the starting order on Saturday, when the racers will have to overcome 414 km of high-speed sections laid out over very difficult terrain. .
The Spanish driver of the Audi factory team admitted on Friday that he could not cope with the task optimally. At the same time, his partner, Matthias Ekström, driving the same electric all-terrain vehicle RS Q RS Q E-TRON e-tron E2, was the fastest, 23 seconds ahead of his closest pursuer – and this is over a distance of 27 km, which the Swede completed in 16 and a half minutes.
Ekström will therefore start early on Saturday morning. His partners, honored masters of rally raids Stéphane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz, drove the prologue sprint distance a little slower: “Mr. Dakar” showed a 7th result, which is not so bad, but the Ferrari driver’s father only became 34th and lost more than two minutes to the leader.
“We didn’t do our best work,” the Spanish veteran admitted. – Our plan was not to finish lower than 15th place, but that didn’t work out well. We made an error in our calculations because we thought we would lose less time by stopping on the route.”
Carlos Sainz Sr. means that his crew deliberately stopped at a distance to start around the middle of the second ten for tactical reasons. But this miscalculation was made worse by the fact that Sainz and his co-driver Lucas Cruz managed to get a little lost and even lost a bit during the short prologue distance.
“I hope there is not too much dust on the track, otherwise we will have serious problems,” Sainz continued. – But there are still many phases to go, so we have to remain patient. We will still have the chance to win back.”
The prototypes with a hybrid drivetrain, which the Audi factory team races, are very exotic in design, even by the standards of the T1.U class, which from this year will be called Ultimate.
They are powered by two electric motor generator units (MGU), one of which transmits torque to the front axle and the second to the rear axle. At the same time, the car is also equipped with a proven 2-liter combustion engine, which was once installed on Audi sports cars of the DTM body series – it powers a third engine generator, which in turn generates electricity to charge the batteries and power the two main MGUs. According to the technical regulations of the Dakar, the engine power must not exceed 392 hp, but without this restriction the complex Audi power plant could develop up to 680 hp.
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.
