Dakar: Sebastien Loeb wins two-day stage

The sixth stage of the Dakar was won by Sebastien Loeb, which became his 25th achievement over the years of participating in these rally stages. What makes today’s success particularly significant is the fact that the nine-time world rally champion won an unprecedentedly long two-day stage – something that has never happened before in the history of the Dakar.

We’ll tell you more about Friday’s results later, but for now let’s quote the comment of Sébastien, who today managed to stay ahead of all his rivals and was the first to bring his Prodrive Hunter racing SUV to the finish in Shubayt.

Sebastien Loeb: “The day went well for us, we passed this stage without any problems. It was very long, the distance of the first part yesterday was more than 400 km. I especially tried to take good care of the car and not be too zealous, knowing that for so many kilometers in the dunes the load on the chassis would be very high.

Today we still had 150 km to go, and then I pushed hard to get a good time, and we did it. In general, we had no problems at all during this long phase. It remains to be seen where we are in the general classification, but I think now, in the second week of the rally, we will have to try to find the right rhythm.

The level of the participants is very high, they all have very fast cars, and if you make a mistake at some point you can lose a lot of time and fall behind. That is why we must now continue steadily to the finish of the Dakar.”

Loeb made this comment immediately after the finish, when he did not yet know his crew’s position based on the results of six stages, but now such information is available: car No. 203 is in third place in the overall standings; Sebastien and his co-driver Fabien Lerquin lose more than 29 minutes to the leaders. Carlos Sainz leads the overall standings, with Mattias Ekström, his Audi Sport teammate, in second place.