During this “48 hour” stage around Bisha in Saudi Arabia (967 km of special), the Spaniard rolled over while the Frenchman was the victim of a fan problem. In the motorbike category, the Australian Daniel Sanders (KTM) is still firmly in the lead.
It was in the car that the day held several surprises. Halfway through this second stage, Al-Rajhi is now ahead in the virtual general classification, until the end of the stage on Monday, the Qatari Nasser al-Attiyah (Dacia) by 1'19 and the South African Henk Lategan (Toyota), winner of the prologue, 2'12.
Bad day on the other hand for Carlos Sainz and Sébastien Loeb, relegated to 49 and 33 minutes respectively from the lead. The first, a four-time winner of the Dakar, put his Ford Raptor on his back at km 327.This is not ideal. We rolled over a dune. The car is a little damaged and so are we” Sainz said.
“Big electronic bug”
Loeb, nine-time world rally champion but never crowned in the Dakar, experienced a “big electronic bug” which forced him to stop for fifteen minutes at the start of the stage, as he explained on the organization's microphone.
“We normally have three fans, we lost the first, the front fan, so it started to heat up, to go into degraded modes. We managed to drag ourselves like that, but ultimately we lost a second fan, so things got really hot there.“, detailed Loeb.
“We have a fan that has started to work again, we managed to drag ourselves there by stopping on each dune, waiting for it to cool down to gain momentum and climb the next one. Suddenly, I have a second fan which restarted“, added the French Dacia driver.
Sanders consolidates his throne
On the motorcycle side (947 km of special), Sanders consolidated his position as leader. Provisionally leading this stage, the winner of the last rally in Morocco increased his overall lead to 4'02 over the American Ricky Brabec (Honda), defending champion, and to 5'59 over the Botswanan Ross Branch (Hero ).
Already victorious in the prologue and the first stage, Sanders, 30, has the ambition to become the second Australian to win the Dakar on a motorcycle after Toby Price (2016 and 2018).
At 5:00 p.m. local (3:00 p.m. French), competitors were invited to join one of the six “break zones” scattered around the course. They will spend the night at their camp, without being able to benefit from technical assistance, before hitting the road again Monday at sunrise to complete this “48 hour” stage.
