Dakar Rally 2023

[EstWRC]

Loeb was really homing in to Sainz, gaining 16 minutes but now also he stopped for 5 minutes and the gap is 9 minutes

[dimviii]

SAINZ AND LOEB AT THE FINISH | ULTIMATE
13:15

Sébastien Loeb and Carlos Sainz have wrapped up the special, with the Frenchman gaining just over 7 minutes on his Spanish rival in the overall. 13′22″ separate the two with two stages to go until the end of the 46th Dakar. Sainz had a big scare after coming to a halt and losing precious minutes, but Mattias Ekström and Stéphane Peterhansel rode to his rescue.

[dimviii]

Carlos Sainz - Stage 10 - ENG



"I lost seven minutes or eight minutes. I had to wait for Mattias because I was running out of tyres."

[dimviii]

Loeb

"It was a hard day for us. We had a problem with the [jack] of the car and we had two punctures, so we needed to climb the rocks to find a way to lift the rear tyre to be able to change it. We lost about 15 minutes like this. For sure, it's a bit frustrating, but okay. The stages are hard, it seems Carlos is still losing some time, so at the end, we'll see where we are tonight."

[focus206]

With 2 stages to go (tomorrow 480 Km special, the last one is a short 175 Km special), gap between Sainz and Loeb is 13 minutes 22 seconds... I think it's just a bit too much to close with speed alone, even if Loeb goes flat out.
The stage was won by Chicherit (Toyota Overdrive) in front of Baragwanath (Century) and Vanagas (Toyota Baltics). Chicherit gets into the top 5, De Villiers loses 3 places and drops to 8th.

Top 5:
1 - Carlos Sainz (Audi)
2 - Sebastien Loeb (Prodrive) + 13m 22s
3 - Lucas Moraes (Toyota) + 1h 02m 44s
4 - Guillaume De Mevius (Toyota Overdrive) + 1h 27m 09s
5 - Guerlain Chicherit (Toyota Overdrive) + 1h 47m 55s

[Mirek]

13 minutes is probably indeed too much for speed alone but it's definitely far from being a comfortable gap. Punctures, navigation errors or whatever other problems may still come.

[dimviii]

“Sorry, I don’t want to jump back into this car,” said an indignant Al-Attiyah. And he stuck to his word.

Loeb did his best to be pragmatic about his only potential helping hand against the Audi trio not sticking around to assist.

“He’s doing what he wants,” was Loeb’s riposte. “For sure in this situation, he was not so motivated to continue, he had some troubles. At one point he decided to leave. That’s his decision. It’s like that.

“He’s doing his own rally; he’s not doing the Dakar to help me. That’s how it is.

“For sure if I had another car starting behind me tomorrow it would be better.”

The other problem is the Hunter. Punctures are a given on the Dakar but both Loeb and Al-Attiyah, before he abandoned the race, had especially struggled with them. And it’s partly down to the design of the car itself.

“It’s our weak point; we have easily some punctures with the heat of the exhaust that are heating the rear tires,” explained Loeb.

Loeb is out of strategic options; this is no longer a chess match. He has to catch over 13 minutes in two stages. All he can do is push on.

Dakar’s penultimate test is a rough, rock-strewn affair, though. The puncture risk is high as it is. Knowing he’s potentially more liable to tire trouble than Sainz but with the need to push on, Loeb will have to strike the finest of balances on Thursday.

His road position is also a double-edged sword: good because he has some lines to follow, bad because of the increased puncture risk of running in the dust.

“I hope the dust will not be too big a problem also because we saw today a lot of guys complaining about the dust,” Loeb added.

“For me, when I changed the second wheel, I had two cars passing, I was in the dust, it was impossible to catch, so I decided to lift and stay behind because I couldn’t see anything and it was too risky to get another puncture in this situation.

“So hopefully tomorrow we will be able to overtake.”

He’ll need to make some passes. Starting 17th on the road, Loeb has Peterhansel directly in front of him and Sainz two cars behind.

https://dirtfish.com/off-road/dakar/...-to-win-dakar/

[focus206]

Sainz today had 3 punctures and was "saved" by Ekstrom, who gave him one spare tyre. With Nasser leaving, Loeb has no teammates (unless he can count on the private Hunter of Cristian Baumgart in 12th?).
For sure tomorrow Loeb will push but he'll need to drive exceptionally well to close most of the gap (last day will be short) without suffering punctures and it will be hard in the rocky terrain, as Loeb stated in the interview quoted by dimviii. Mission almost impossible, but if there's someone who can do it, it's Loeb.

[Arnold Triyudho Wardono]

Nasser decided to retire from this year's Dakar, stating "Sorry, I don't want to jump again in this car"

Imagine if Nasser would jumping ship to M-Sport next year..

Sent from my M2010J19CG using Tapatalk

[dimviii]

Sainz today had 3 punctures and was "saved" by Ekstrom, who gave him one spare tyre. .

so after 3 punctures,he could push again and have 2 spares for the rest of stage.
at this video at 6,20 we can see all 3 audis and 3 people to change Sainz tyres
https://www.dakar.com/en/stage-10/bike/gallery/video