Winner of his 48th stage of the Dakar this Tuesday, Nasser Al-Attiyah opened the road for the first special traced in the dunes of the Empty Quarter, around Shubaytah, where the final finish of this 47th edition will be judged on Friday. It quickly became apparent that the Qatari was going to lose time on the leader of the general classification, Yazeed Al Rajhi (Toyota), and the cause was a simple error from his co-driver, from the tenth kilometer of the special.
“At kilometer 10, there were two successive and identical notes in terms of drawing in the road book, and I skipped one”explained Édouard Boulanger to us after the special. “I left at the heading indicated for kilometer 14, so there was nothing to do. It’s a big mistake on my part, we did about six kilometers too much, three in one direction and three in the other to come back. In the dunes, six kilometers is long. We were looking for a hidden waypoint so I was focused on my heading, I was no longer looking at my road book, and when I took a look, I saw. That’s how it is. It was necessary to make one, it is done. Of course it doesn’t help us, but that’s how it is. »
For his part, Nasser Al-Attiyah suffered the blow at the finish, he who had to regain 25 minutes on the leader in three stages to win a fifth Dakar: “I’m very disappointed, but what can we do? We could have had a good stage, but we will see what position we are in and what we can do tomorrow. Every day is very important, and we had a good pace but we lost a lot of time. This is the most disappointing day of my life. »
In their misfortune, the crew of the Dacia Sandrider n°200 lost a little less time at the head of the general classification, since the leader Yazeed Al Rajhi got stuck in the sand, letting his teammate Henk Lategan slip away at the controls of the rally. From 25 minutes yesterday, the gap has increased to half an hour today. For Édouard Boulanger, this remains too important to hope to win, but a podium remains within reach. With a distant position in the running order this Thursday for the queen stage of this Dakar, the possibility of seeing Al-Attiyah regain minutes by the handful cannot be ruled out at all…
“The dump was clearly not intended at all, but it can help us for tomorrow’s stage, because we will have a starting position much further away than we should have had. I don’t know exactly what the ranking is, but we’re definitely not going to take 45 minutes from Yazeed. For victory, barring any problems, it’s dead, but the podium is still playable. Once again, it wasn’t intentional, but for tomorrow, it could benefit us. »
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