Spaniard Nani Roma led compatriot Carlos Sainz in a Ford one-two at the top of the Dakar Rally car standings Tuesday after a tough ninth stage in the Saudi Arabian desert for some frontrunners.
Dacia’s previous leader and five times winner Nasser Saleh al-Attiyah slipped to third but still only one minute 10 seconds behind Roma, with Toyota’s South African Henk Lategan fourth - and with a further five minutes to make up. “I had three punctures today, but I think everyone had problems,” said Roma, who last led the Dakar 12 years ago when he won. “We are positive to be here.”
Sainz said it had been hard to find the way at one point, with the cars taking a different route to the bikes and no longer having tracks to follow.
“It was tricky navigation but what can we do? I don’t know which position we are in and how many minutes we have lost to the winner, we will see how we’ll be. It’s OK, no problem, we’ll see tomorrow. We’re absolutely ready for it,” al-Attiyah said Tuesday.
Lategan described it as a “little bit of a disaster of a day” after getting lost, suffering a puncture, broken windscreen and loss of power steering.
“I was driving with no power steering, extremely difficult in these cars because the wheels are so big so you have to have massive power to even turn the wheels,” he said.
“And then we had some more punctures, got lost and we hit that bush in Seb (Loeb)’s dust that broke the windscreen. So we had to stop and kick the windscreen out because I couldn’t see from inside the car, put some goggles on and carry on going.”
The 410km stage from Wadi Ad Dawasir to the overnight bivouac, first half of a marathon stage, was won by 21-year-old Polish non-factory Toyota driver Eryk Goczal.
He finished seven minutes ahead of his uncle Michal, also with the Energylandia team, while father Marek was in 31st position.
Australian Toby Price, a double Dakar winner on motorcycles, was third on the stage for Toyota.
Sainz, 63, was handed a one minute 10-second penalty for speeding and finished the stage seventh but ahead of most of his rivals, including Roma in eighth.
The four times Dakar winner is now 57 seconds behind Roma, who also won on a motorcycle in 2004.
Sweden’s Mattias Ekstrom, who had been second overall for Ford, lost a lot of time with a navigation error and dropped to fifth and 11 minutes and 19 seconds off the pace. Dacia’s nine times world rally champion Loeb was sixth.
Spaniard Tosha Schareina won the stage in the motorcycle category for Honda, with KTM’s Argentine rider Luciano Benavides losing the way and his overall lead to Australia’s defending champion Daniel Sanders.
Sanders, also on a KTM, led Honda’s American Ricky Brabec by six minutes and 24 seconds.
The race, which ends on Saturday on the Red Sea coast, is the first round of the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) season.
