The number 9 is perhaps the lucky number for Sébastien Loeb, nine-time world rally champion. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean his bad luck on the Dakar has disappeared. This Sunday, for the first day of the 48H Chrono stage, the Alsatian encountered a major electronic problem which handicapped him for several dozen kilometers. Well placed to play for victory after 300 kilometers of racing, the Frenchman then began to experience overheating of his mount, which forced him to stop several times…
“We normally have three fans, we lost the first one at the front. It was starting to heat up, [la voiture] went into degraded mode with less power. We managed to drag ourselves like that, then finally we lost a second fan so it was really heating up, explained the Dacia driver at the time of refueling, at kilometer 452, where he tried to resolve part of the problem in communication with his team. We had a fan that started working again, so we managed to drag ourselves up there, stopping on each dune, waiting for it to cool down so we could gain momentum to climb the next one. We overheated at the top, we waited for it to cool down, and so on… It's a big electronic bug. »
The hope of a return this Monday?
A big bug which is costly: at the end of this first day and upon arrival at the bivouac, Sébastien Loeb is significantly behind the stage leader, Yazeed Al-Rajhi, by 32'30. In the virtual general classification, he would be 33'33 behind the Saudi, an already significant gap even before the finish of the 2nd stage. However, after the refueling, the Alsatian continued to attack despite his overheating problems and regained four minutes on the leaders between kilometers 452 and 617, thanks in particular to the tracks already marked after the passage of the first competitors. On Monday, Sébastien Loeb will have to continue to save the furniture if he wants to maintain a chance, however slim it may already be, of victory in this Dakar 2025.
During the night at the bivouac, the Dacia driver will not be able to receive any technical assistance on site and will, along with his co-driver Fabian Lurquin, have to fend for themselves with remote assistance, by telephone, from the Dacia Sandriders team. “They are left to their own devices, we can start trying to analyze, brainstorm, and as soon as we manage to get them on the phone this evening, [on essaiera] to continue to diagnose and support them”confided Tiphanie Isnard, Team Principal of Dacia, to the Chaîne L’Équipe.
READ ALSO > Dakar 2025 – Stage 2 (mid-stage): Al-Rajhi leads the 48H Chrono, Loeb and Sainz big losers
