Three punctures yesterday affected Qatar’s Nasser Saleh al-Attiyah’s performance in stage 2 of the Rallye Du Maroc in Morocco, pushing him way down the standings.
Lying second at the end of the first stage, the Qatari driver saw his Toyota Hilux falter amidst the challenging terrain.
Nasser finished the day in 26th place, 53min 38sec behind his main challenger and the stage winner France’s Sebastien Loeb of Bahrain Raid Xtreme.
Loeb clocked a winning time of 2:56.54sec in the 315km stage ahead of 10:15secs from BRX teammate Orly Terranova with Guerlain Chicherit in another Hunter completing the top three on a dramatic day.
Nasser is now seventh in the rally standings with an overall time of 7:30:38s while Loeb tops the list with a time of 6:57:20 after the stage from Agadir to Tan-Tan.
For the second day running, Chicherit impressed on his first competitive drive in the Hunter, setting the pace on the early part of the stage.
It was then Loeb’s turn to increase the power and take the stage lead before the halfway point, with BRX teammate Terranova also making good progress to make it a 1-2-3 for the Prodrive Hunters, before the Argentine later moved ahead of Chicherit.
Red Bull driver Nasser al-Attiyah of Qatar and his French co-driver Mathieu Baumel in a Toyota GR DKR Hilux at the Rallye Du Maroc yesterday.
