As i suspected Sainz, It was no coincidence that so many people went around the same area after getting lost. And neither is it that when the race does not hide traps that squeeze the difficulty of navigation, it is where it belongs, up. In the 338 kilometers against the clock of the stage that aspired to be a marathon and the floods left in ‘only’ one more, there was not a replica of the chaos experienced in the previous day. In these conditions, it was only necessary for the Audi to respond, it did and the Madrid native finished after Loeb and Al Attiyah.
On the way to Al Qaisumah they were waiting for the first serious dune cords of the Dakar, yes, with the sand more compact than expected by the rains of the previous days. In that terrain in which the hybrid of the four rings performs best, Sainz decently held the pace set by the French and the Qatari in the lead. It gave a little bit at each checkpoint, but he knew how to keep his constancy to stay under the six-minute loss and thus keep a place on the ‘podium’ of the stage.
Ahead, in that fight of two that will be until one of them hangs, Loeb and Al Attiyah crossed the finish line hand in hand. As the winner of the previous stage, the Qatari opened the ban, but in the middle of the route, the Frenchman caught up with him, continued in his slipstream for a few kilometers and passed him before the end exchanging positions to take the victory. The result, three and a half minutes ahead of the BRX over Toyota, which in the general they are slightly more than nine. They promise entertainment.
What applied to Sainz previously, can also be valid for another Spanish, Rome. BRX’s too He enjoyed the smooth day he needed to recover from Sunday’s upset, and he did. It was fifth to eight minutes. The entire Audi team, albeit no longer aspiring, also breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that their performance on a normal Dakar stage is not bad for a rookie. Peterhansel and Ekstrom added a fourth and ninth place to Sainz’s third. That’s what they have left.