Loeb thought he was giving up but ultimately remained “in the match”

Sébastien Loeb may have experienced the roller coaster of rally raid more than once over the last eight years, but he is nonetheless surprised each time. Arriving seventh in the 48H stage this Monday, he reversed a situation which was more poorly underway than ever the day before. Here he is in an unexpected sixth place in the general classification with a delay of 18’56 on the new leader Henk Lategan.

After almost losing everything on Sunday due to technical problems, the Frenchman returned to work with his co-driver Fabian Lurquin to erase a large part of the accumulated delay. The duo therefore remains in the running for final victory in the 2025 Dakar.

On Sunday, the No. 219 Dacia Sandrider experienced serious cooling failures, which undermined the first part of the second stage. Forced to stop several times, Sébastien Loeb was able to count on the valuable assistance of his teammates, and more particularly of Pablo Moreno, co-driver of Cristina Gutiérrez.

Today I am happy, yesterday I was not.

“It was very long, difficult”summarizes Sébastien Loeb. “We had an electrical problem which forced us to stop for around 37 minutes during the special [dimanche]. At that time, we believed that we would not be able to resolve anything and that we would have to give up. And then suddenly, when Pablo helped us, we found a way to restart the car and in the end, it worked very well.”

“The car was very efficient, we made up a lot of that time, more than twenty minutes, so it’s better than what we expected yesterday. Yesterday we thought we were going to have to retire, and today ‘Today we’re still in the game. Today I’m happy, yesterday I wasn’t.’

For the Dacia clan, the best representative in the general classification at the end of the marathon stage remains the five-time winner of the event, Nasser Al-Attiyah. Third, 11’14 behind the leader, the Qatari is above all delighted to have overcome this first major obstacle without encountering any problems.

“We tried to manage without having too many problems, because it’s a format where we are very far from the team”he recalls. “We had to manage each kilometer without having any problems and we managed to do it, we took care of the car to bring it back to the bivouac. It’s a long rally, we learn a lot and now we have a lot of data on the Dacia Sandrider We work day by day, that’s our goal.”

The most beautiful photos of the 2nd stage of the Dakar