Dakar: Loeb has closed the gap, but Sainz remains in front

The finish line of the 2024 Dakar Rally is getting closer, with only three stages to go, and today Sébastien Loeb was successful again.

The nine-time world rally champion drives an off-road Prodrive Hunter prototype and on the distance of the ninth stage of the competition he recorded the best time, with 4 minutes and 14 seconds. ahead of Carlos Sainz, who finished second.

The third stage was completed by Mathieu Serradori, Loeb’s compatriot, an independent racer, racing a rear-wheel drive Century CRT6-T buggy. This is his best result since the start of the rally attack.

Loeb manages to gradually close the gap with Sainz, who is still in the lead in the general classification – now they are separated by just over 20 minutes. If both remaining three stages are completed at about the same pace and no one encounters any unforeseen difficulties, it won’t be easy to win back this time. But yesterday, for example, Sebastien was in the lead from the start until almost the finish, but then lost time due to a navigation error, so a lot can still happen.

“Today’s stage was long, but we rode it well,” said Loeb. – Halfway through the race we punctured the tires twice, so in the end I had to be careful not to puncture the third one. But overall we played three minutes of Carlos.

The gap is still large, but there are still three stages to go. Overall we will see how everything turns out, but in the coming days we plan to persevere.”

Of course, Loeb dreams of winning the Dakar, which he has not yet achieved, but to achieve this he will have to take risks. Moreover, if Carlos Sainz can count on the tactical cooperation with his Audi Sport teammates, who also drive very fast and finished today in the top ten (Stefan Peterhansel showed 6th fastest time, Matthias Ekström – 8th), then Sebastien Loeb will fight alone.

His partner, Nasser Al-Attiyah, still has a technical problem and today he had to withdraw from the podium. Tomorrow the Qatari driver will continue the battle, but if the car can be repaired he will start well behind Loeb.

In the motorcycle category, the second stage victory was achieved by Frenchman Adrien van Beveren, rider of the Honda factory team, but in the general classification he takes third place, behind Ricky Brabec and Ross Branch. However, he does not lose that much to them: he is eleven and a half minutes behind the American and loses just over four minutes to the rider from Botswana.

Among the quad riders, another Frenchman, Alexandre Giraud, set the best time on Tuesday. This was his second victory in the 2024 Dakar and today the Yamaha Racing rider almost halved the gap with Argentinian Manuel Andujar, who leads after nine stages of the rally raid.

After the disqualification of Eric Gochal and his uncle Michal, whose cars did not meet the technical regulations, the winners in the Challenger class alternate in each stage: today the Argentinian duo Nicolas Cavigliasso and Valentina Pertegarini, who acts as navigator, finished first .

In their light SUV Taurus T3 Max, they completed the stage with a seven-minute lead over Chilean Francisco Lopez Contardo, who is third in the general classification. Cavigliasso’s team is in 9th place there and the lead over the leaders is already measured in hours, so the Chilean duo does not pretend to achieve high results. And the leader in the class is the American Mitchell Guthrie, who showed a 7th result today.

In the SSV class there are also new faces on the first line of protocol: Christiano Batista and his Spanish co-driver Fausto Mota. They don’t claim victory in the all-terrain vehicle category, so their victory today is more a result of the tactical games of the Sebastien Loeb Racing team, which leads the overall standings. On Tuesday, Xavier de Soltre crossed the finish line in second place – presumably he simply chose not to take any risks, as all his closest rivals were behind.

Interestingly enough, a similar picture is observed in the freight category, i.e. There too there were new winners: the Dutch Geert Husink, Rob Buursen and Martin Roesink from the Jongbloed Dakar Team. Crew No. 615 drives a specially prepared Renault C460 truck with a hybrid power plant. Huzink is one of the Dakar veterans; this is already his 13th rally run, but more often than not he failed to finish and showed his best result in 2018, with a 7th place in class.

By the way, on the first stage of this rally raid he showed the second result, but could not maintain this level, and in the general classification his team is not even in the top ten. And the leader is the Czech trio Martin Masik, who today brought his Iveco Powerstar to the finish in second place, which suited him well.

Masik really doesn’t need to rush or take any risks – after nine stages he has a lead of more than two hours over his nearest rival, his compatriot Ales Loprais.

The tenth stage of the race awaits the Dakar participants on Wednesday; the total distance is 612 km, of which 371 km are fast special stages. The terrain will once again be different than what anyone rode on today, and the terrain will be predominantly mountainous. Therefore, the risk of a flat tire and suspension damage is greater than on desert stages. On the one hand, all this requires increased concentration, on the other hand, those left behind must take risks, as discussed above. Those who can calculate everything correctly and find the right balance are lucky.