Dreams flew away this Thursday, in the immensity of the Empty Quarter. That of Yazeed Al-Rajhi, who won his first Dakar, at home to begin with. The Saudi Toyota overturned at the 51st kilometer. Stéphane Peterhansel has lost hope of having the best possible way to leave the big stage in eight days. It was a simple puncture coupled with a hydraulic failure at kilometer 225 that would derail his ideal plan to pull away with a fifteenth success.
“We had a flat tire and a hydraulic jack body failedPeterhansel explained as he waited for help in the middle of the dunes. Since we don’t have a manual jack, we don’t know how we will be able to change the wheel. With the damaged hydraulic system, I no longer have power steering and I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this. »
The trio of Al-Attiyah, Chicherit and Ekström stand out
Others could continue their dreams under the stars and a tent. Nasser Al-Attiyah, Guerlain Chicherit, Mattias Ekström and their respective co-pilots gathered in the camp farthest from the start, at the 436th place of the 547km race, surely had a lot to say before slipping into their sleeping bags. . Qatar, and especially its French navigator Mathieu Baumel, will be able to tell about the difficulty of creating tracks in such terrain and the minutes that fly, Tignard will certainly be able to tell about his repeated nausea, while the Swede will be able to bring back the advantages obtained from the strategy applied the previous day by Audi.
In the virtual gong general of this first part of the dreaded “48 hours”, which sounded this Thursday at 4 p.m., Ekström took second place in the general, a quarter of an hour behind his team-mate Carlos Sainz. After leaving later in the morning, the Spaniard stopped at the previous camp, at kilometer 402. A well-deserved rest awaited him, as El Matador, despite his 61 years, was emperor in 5 hours 22 minutes spent per lap.
“We drove well, we had a good stage”
He will probably have his former teammate and friend from Citroën WRC Sébastien Loeb as his camping neighbor. “We drove well, we had a great stageAlsasan commented on his arrival at the night stop. The car’s front differential is humming at a hundred clamps, but it runs for now and I hope it lasts. For the rest, I think we didn’t waste much time, we did what we wanted. But I have no idea what the differences are. »
If the poker move attempted by the Alsatian, who was voluntarily penalized on Wednesday, could see him leap forward in the standings in terms of placings, the gaps between the leading men could remain significant as Loeb (4th) was practically on Thursday more than thirty-five minutes behind Sainz.