The ordeal is over for Sébastien Loeb on this Dakar 2025. So often unhappy in the past on this legendary event, the French driver was in fact forced to abandon, Tuesday evening in Saudi Arabia, due to the damage suffered by his Dacia Sandrider after his accident during the 3rd stage.
“It’s over for Loeb and Lurquin. Victim of an accident at kilometer 12, the roll bar of the Dacia Sandrider is damaged. The inspection by the FIA technical stewards led to the start being banned for stage 4,” indicated the race management on its X account.
His third abandonment in the middle of the Dakar
For his ninth participation, the nine-time world rally champion once again fails to win his first title in this prestigious race in the desert. So often placed but never crowned (3rd in 2019 and 2024, 2nd in 2017, 2022 and 2023), the 50-year-old Alsatian must resolve to abandon the Dakar en route for the third time in his career, after 2018 and 2021.
Sébastien Loeb “does not want to comment on this decision this evening. He is clearly very disappointed,” the Dacia team told the press. At km 12 of the 327 of today’s special between Bisha and Al Henakiyah, Loeb’s Dacia crossed the road after a bad bounce and carried out several impressive rollovers, which seriously damaged the vehicle.
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-More than an hour lost on this 3rd stage
The Frenchman and his Belgian co-driver Fabian Lurquin restarted after a five-minute stop and repairs, but the consequences of the accident were felt for the rest of the race. “We were able to continue but suddenly the steering rod broke, I think because of the rollover,” regretted Sébastien Loeb at the finish of this special. Then we had a problem with the engine overheating. We tried to finish the stage. We got there but in the end we lost an hour. »
“It’s not our favorite day, we lose an hour, we say to ourselves that it’s crap,” continued the Alsatian. That’s how it is, we’ll have to continue. We will ride and we will see, even if aiming for victory becomes complicated. » This was his last reaction on Tuesday, a few hours before the warning shot from the federation fell.
Sébastien Loeb therefore finished the course in 4h20min12sec, more than an hour after the winner of the day, the young South African Saood Variawa. “I think that an intelligent race avoiding excesses and bullshit would surely pay off,” the driver philosophized before the start of the race. His exit from this Dakar 2025 comes the day after the abandonment of the title holder, Carlos Sainz, for similar reasons.
South African Henk Lategan leads overall
The Spaniard had to reluctantly retire due to damage to his roll bar after his Ford Raptor rolled over during the “48h flat”. For this edition, Sébastin Loeb moved from Prodrive to the Dacia team, a newcomer to the Dakar. Learning from his past mechanical problems, technical improvements had been made to his car compared to his previous vehicles, such as strengthening the half-wheels or moving the exhaust pipes which heated the tires.
Our file on Sébastien Loeb
But that was not enough to go beyond three stages of an event until then dominated by the South African Henk Lategan (Toyota), who maintains an overall lead of 7’17” over the Qatari Nasser. al-Attiyah (Dacia) and 9’34” sec on the Swede Mattias Ekström (Ford). It remains to be seen whether Sébastien Loeb will relaunch for a tenth experience on the Dakar after this new failure.
