Dakar: Carlos Sainz becomes sole leader

Yesterday’s predictions that the fate of the most important Dakar trophies would be decided at this stage have unfortunately come true and the battle for victory has in fact already stopped. In any case, it became a lot less exciting after the problems that Sebastien Loeb encountered in the 11th stage of the rally attack, which we talked about.

Yesterday he reduced the lead over Carlos Sainz to just over 13 minutes, but today due to suspension failure he only reached the finish in 28th, several hours behind the winner, who, like yesterday, was Guerlain Chichery, driving a Toyota Hilux. SUV Overdrive Racing team.

But Sainz finished third, losing 5 minutes and 35 seconds to the Frenchman and just three seconds behind Belgian Guillaume de Mevius, Chicheri’s teammate. Accordingly, the father of the Ferrari driver remains the leader of the general classification, where his lead over the same De Mevius is almost an hour and a half.

To take his fourth victory in the Dakar, the two-time world rally champion just needs to ride the final stage at a relatively leisurely pace, trying to avoid unnecessary risks and just hoping that technology won’t let him down. And then this will be the first victory for the off-road prototypes of the Audi RS Q e-tron E2 on electric drive, equipped with hybrid power plants. Their “hybridity” is that in addition to electric motors, there is also a combustion engine, the function of which is to run the generator to charge the batteries.

Specific symbolism will be seen in all this, because after three Dakars, Audi wants to scale down its rally raid program in order to fully concentrate on preparing for its debut in Formula 1, scheduled for 2026.

“Everything went well for us,” said Sainz, nicknamed El Matador, after the 11th stage. – There was only one slow puncture, but it happened shortly before the finish. When we met Sébastien Loeb on the road, we drove more carefully.

But the stage was very difficult because there were many stones. Sometimes you just had to look carefully at the track from a distance of just five meters in front of the car, move very slowly and hope you get lucky. Sometimes I drove very slowly, although sometimes even at that speed you can have a puncture.

There are still 170 km to go until the end of the race. But I know well the nature of this rally – here, first of all, it is important to cross the finish line, and this is exactly the mood we have. Now we will concentrate on preparing for tomorrow, we will have to check the car well after today’s difficult stage, and then we will see if we can reach the finish. Since our lead is over an hour, I don’t need to rush.”

But the battle continues among the motorcycle racers: for the final stage of the Dakar, the American Ricky Brabec is still in the lead, but he is only 10 minutes and 22 seconds ahead of Ross Branch, the winner of today’s stage. Today Brabec finished second, losing just over half a minute to his opponent. If he conquers the relatively short stage tomorrow without any problems, he will win this year’s super marathon. However, anything can happen in Dakar.

For example, Frenchman Adrien van Beveren, Brabec’s teammate in the Honda factory team, finished third today, but in the general classification he holds the same position, losing just over four minutes to Branch. And if you are lucky, Van Beveren can still stay ahead of the rider from Botswana, but that will become clear tomorrow.

In today’s ATV class, the Frenchman Alexandre Giraud is at the forefront: we wrote the day before about his fundamental rivalry with the Argentinian Manuel Andujar, and this confrontation continues. Andujar is still in the lead after eleven stages of the rally raid, his lead is just over eight minutes and obviously Giroud will take risks tomorrow in the hope of regaining this deficit.

In the Challenger category, the second victory of the stage was achieved by Nicholas Cavigliasso – it seems he got the hang of it by the end of the rally and was consistently holding high positions, but the day before the end of the race his crew took 9th place in class with Mitchell Guthrie remaining in the lead. Today the American finished 6th, but among those he left ahead, Spanish racer Cristina Gutierrez Herrero, who lost more than 25 minutes to Guthrie, still has some hope of victory in this category, and even then they are illusory.

There have been some changes in the balance of power in the SSV class: winner Jerome de Sadler moved up to second place after today’s stage. Yesterday he took 2nd place and today he took his first victory, moving him up to 2nd place in this category, ahead of American Sarah Price.

Incidentally, the lead of Xavier de Soltre, who still leads the all-terrain vehicle class, has noticeably decreased due to a 20-minute penalty he received today. The French driver of the Sebastien Loeb Racing team was punished for not allowing Sarah Price to overtake him for a long time, which prevented him in every possible way.

In the freight category, the stage victory was achieved by Ales Loprais’ team, but this will not affect the position in the general classification, as the gap with the other Czech trio, Martin Masik’s team, is more than two hours. At the same time, Masik finished second today, although he could have taken his time and not taken so many risks.

There remains one last stage before the finish of the Dakar with a total length of 328 km, of which 175 km are high-speed sections. Plus, the terrain they go through isn’t too difficult. In any case, you cannot relax: the rally raid press service recalled how Kevin Benavidez defeated Tony Price in the motorcycle class last year on the last day of the competition. It is true that before the start of the stage they were separated by only 12 seconds, and this time the gaps in all categories are larger, but it is better not to guess anything in advance.