Dakar Rally 2023

[fiscorpun]

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.

Loeb P3 overall? Oh I guess I was reading results in a bad website then haha
This is great! Lots of stages yet to be raced, hope he can catch the Audis

[dimviii]

https://twitter.com/fernischumi/stat...19282729009429

[focus206]

Loeb P3 overall? Oh I guess I was reading results in a bad website then haha
This is great! Lots of stages yet to be raced, hope he can catch the Audis

It will depend a lot from Prodrive's questionable reliability...

[Red bull]

Ford in negotiations with Carlos Sainz for Dakar 2025. https://www.relevo.com/rallies/dakar...bdngZDlnfxzyTY

[focus206]

Ekstrom stopped with broken suspension, he continues but lost a lot of time and he's most likely out of contention for the podium. Loeb won today's stage in front of Moraes and Al Attiyah, 4th is overall leader Sainz (+ 10m 31s).

Top 5 after today:
1 - Carlos Sainz (Audi)
2 - Sebastien Loeb (Prodrive) + 19m 00s
3 - Lucas Moraes (Toyota) + 1h 00m 34s
4 - Guillaume De Mevius (Toyota Overdrive) +1h 30m 50s
5 - Giniel De Villiers (Toyota) +1h 40m 07s

[dimviii]

Nasser

"We suffered two punctures. After the second time, the car got wobbly, and that's when we realised we'd broken a rear arm. It's a weak point of this car that we need to fix. Even so, we finished in the top 3, which is a good result."

[dimviii]

Sainz

"Quite a difficult day, with the navigation. We also had a puncture. I think Séb' did really well. 10 minutes is quite a lot. I don't really know what happened [to Ekström]. We'll see."

Loeb
"We had a good stage. No big mistakes. The navigation was really tricky. We were the first car, so... We had to make the line, but sometimes it's better, because we were really concentrated on our job and I was pushing hard, trying to be very conscientious in the tricky navigation parts, and we did it very well."

[focus206]

Very good job by Loeb considering he was 1st on the road.
I saw the highlights of when Nasser broke the suspension arm in the marathon stage, he was checking it and then said to the camera "it's not strong enough"...
I think Loeb can catch Sainz on speed, but we'll see the reliability. The electric Audi buggy is not super robust either. Behind them, there's 3 reliable Toyota Hilux ready to steal the victory in case something big happens.

[lmmjvss]

Goczal DSQ!!!!! Oh man that sucks. Its always something like: "But the rulebook allows this thing". - "Nope, it deosnt" - "Its written here, ffs" - "Nah, it means a different thing".
They will appeal, but the race is over for the team

[focus206]

Some considerations on the major teams

Prodrive: car is fast but fragile, Loeb's hopes depend on if the car keeps it together

Audi: also fast but too fragile. If Sainz runs into big trouble and loses the podium, it would be a disaster for Audi at Dakar (best result in 2022: 9th, best result in 2023: 14th)

Toyota: imo still the best car, but you can tell they're without Nasser. Al Rajhi is fast but mistake prone, De Villiers reliable but not among the fastest. At least Moraes is doing excellent for his 2nd Dakar, De Mevius too.

Mini: I don't know what's the future plan for X-Raid, but only 3 Minis this year (there used to be 6-8 works ones + some privateers). All of them had troubles and are either retired or more than 50 hours behind.

Ford: Not a good debut for M-Sport, Nani Roma has technical troubles today and is now classified 35 hours behind, Woolridge crashed and is even more behind. At least there's Prokop in his Ford in 6th.