Dakar 2017

[Mirek]

Sounds silly...

Yesterday's truck leader Van de Brink stopped too.

[A FONDO]

FROM AUTOSPORT

Stephane Peterhansel took his first stage win of the 2017 Dakar Rally, while Peugeot team-mate Sebastian Loeb continued to lead overall as main challenger Nasser Al-Attiyah hit trouble.
Al-Attiyah headed the pack for much of Wednesday's third stage and looked set to wrest the overall lead away from Loeb at the day's end, only for Al-Attiyah's Toyota Hilux to sustain significant damage, forcing him to stop.
After the first two days were run close to sea level, Wednesday's Argentina-based Tucuman - Jujuy test featured a major spike in altitude ahead of the rally's arrival in Bolivia.
The timed stage was split into two sections, a 240km opener and a 124km follow-up, linked by a neutralised road section where the cars climbed more than 5000m above sea level.
Loeb entered the day with a 28-second lead over Al-Attiyah, but his advantage soon disappeared, as the Qatari made up four minutes during the navigation-heavy opening kilometres.
Through the remainder of the first timed section, Al-Attiyah was instead challenged by Peterhansel, but managed to keep the Frenchman at bay, entering the neutralised zone with a two-minute advantage.
But Al-Attiyah's charge came to an end soon after he resumed timed running.
He badly damaged a wheel off-piste and ground to a halt.
He remained stationary for around an hour before resuming the stage, only to stop again shortly after.

With Al-Attiyah stranded, Peterhansel eased to stage victory, with Carlos Sainz Sr and Loeb making up a Peugeot 1-2-3.
Sainz trails Loeb by 42 seconds in the overall classification, with Peterhansel four minutes adrift.
X-Raid Mini's Mikko Hirvonen ran inside the top three for much of the stage, but eventually dropped back to fourth.
The Finn now sits best of the rest behind Peugeots in the main classification, trailing Loeb by 9m38s.
Al-Attiyah's dramas were far from the only bad news of the day for Toyota, as Nani Roma, Giniel de Villiers and privateer Erik van Loon all stopped in the second part of the stage.
Of the trio, Roma came off best, losing only a few minutes and finishing fifth, just ahead of Yazeed Al-Rajhi's X-Raid Mini and the fourth factory Peugeot of Cyril Despres.
De Villiers dropped to 35 minutes off the lead as a result of his stoppage.

[Mirek]

A story from Dakar

In the second leg Czech biker Lukáš Kvapil found an injured Italian biker Domenico Cipollone. The Italian was unconscious. Kvapil stopped, called the rescue team, made a shadow using his jacket as a cover, managed to wake Cipollone up and gave him his water. He waited for fifty minutes for the help and assisted in the rescue effort for another two hours. Tired from the sun he rode further but after some time crashed in a hole covered by sand. He suffered contusion, face and shoulder injuries. When he was transported into the hospital he found that Domenico Cipollone is lying in the same room. Now he's waiting for transport back to CZ for surgery.

[Mirek]

Slovak biker Ivan Jakeš was struck by a lightning yesterday but it looks like he was very lucky. He underwent many medical tests afterwards and it seems he was ok and could continue in the event.

[EstWRC]

Peterhansel lost and Loeb stopped at the moment, reason still not known

[dimviii]

Nasser

[EstWRC]

Loeb now through WP2 but has lost 20 minutes. damn!

[dupanton]

Sainz new virtual leader.
Barreda has (virtually) a very comfortable lead of over 15min, on stage 4 already!

[Mirek]

Tatra Buggyra leg 3 now with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=P...&v=xsqfeD4PFnM

[Mirek]

Toby Price out with a broken leg...

This editions had a very tough start I would say.