Dakar Rally 2023

[focus206]

Stage win for Moraes in front of Ekstrom and Al Rajhi.

Top 5 after today:
1 - Yazeed Al Rajhi (Toyota Overdrive)
2 - Carlos Sainz (Audi) + 29s
3 - Mattias Ekstrom (Audi) + 8m 26s
4 - Lucas Moraes (Toyota) + 9m 17s
5 - Nasser Al Attiyah (Prodrive) + 10m 49s

Peterhansel 8th, Loeb 9th.

[EstWRC]

Loeb again with 3 punctures today. Every year the same

[focus206]

Nasser also got 3 punctures and finished on 3 wheels, bust must have happened towards the end because he finished the stage in 4th, 1 minute and a half behind the winner. Could it be that the Prodrive Hunter is very puncture prone? Hiluxes rarely get that many punctures...

[dimviii]

Nasser also got 3 punctures and finished on 3 wheels, bust must have happened towards the end because he finished the stage in 4th, 1 minute and a half behind the winner. Could it be that the Prodrive Hunter is very puncture prone? Hiluxes rarely get that many punctures...

about Loeb

We lost a lot of time repairing the tyre and inflating it again. Then we had to stop every twenty kilometres because it was losing air, so we lost a lot of time with this.

[Mirek]

If you are interested Macík has his daily videos with English subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/@martinmacikjr/videos

[focus206]

Loeb wins stage 4 in front of Al Rajhi and Al Attiyah and moves up to 6th (+ 23m 50s)

Top 5:
1 - Yazeed Al Rajhi (Toyota Overdrive)
2 - Carlos Sainz (Audi) + 4m 29s
3 - Nasser Al Attiyah (Prodrive) + 11m 03s
4 - Lucas Moraes (Toyota) + 19m 31s
5 - Mattias Ekstrom (Audi) + 19m 42s

[focus206]

Stage win for Nasser, in front of Chicherit and Yacopini (both Toyota Overdrive).
Loeb lost 21 minutes (6 minutes loss + 15 minutes penalty for missing a checkpoint) and said: "We lost big time today in the hope of winning big time tomorrow" in the marathon stage. I can only guess he wants to start far back, even though 21 minutes loss seems a lot.

Top 5 after today:
1 - Yazeed Al Rajhi (Toyota Overdrive)
2 - Nasser Al Attiyah (Prodrive) + 9m 03s
3 - Carlos Sainz (Audi) + 11m 31s
4 - Mattias Ekstrom (Audi) + 22m 58s
5 - Mathieu Serradori (Century) + 31m 00s

Peterhansel is 6th (+ 34m 12s), Loeb is 9th (+ 43m 03s)

[lmmjvss]

So many flat tires , eh? Is there any rule preventing tire brands to build partnerships with teams to test some new products. Like on those Rocky Stages, maybe some "Twheels" could help, no? I mean, Dakar IS THE PLACE for that..... since WRC dont want to be the place for innovations haha

[focus206]

Half way through today's marathon stage, Sainz is leading with 3 minutes and a half on Ekstrom and 5 minutes on Loeb.
Nasser is around 20 minutes back, Peterhansel stopped for mechanical trouble, overall leader Al Rajhi crashed.

[focus206]

Loeb wins the 48 hours marathon stage, Sainz is second 2 minutes behind, Ekstrom is third 11 minutes behind. As expected though, the penalty of 15 minutes of the stage before resulted too big, and overall Loeb lost ground to Sainz and Ekstrom, even if gaining 3rd place overall.
Nasser broke a steering arm and lost more than 2 hours.

Top 5 after today:
1 - Carlos Sainz (Audi)
2 - Mattias Ekstrom (Audi) + 20m 21s
3 - Sebastien Loeb (Prodrive) + 29m 31s
4 - Lucas Moraes (Toyota) + 1h 04m 00s
5 - Guillaume De Mevius (Toyota Overdrive) + 1h 09m 47s

11 drivers under the 2 hours gap from Sainz, with De Villiers 6th and Prokop 7th.