Toyota’s Henk Lategan has moved into the lead of the Dakar Rally following the completion of the 48-hour chrono, while Sébastien Loeb showed signs of a comeback by regaining nearly 15 minutes.
After the overnight stay in breakpoint E situated just after the 618km marker, the crews set off for the second half of the chrono at 7am on Monday, with Yazeed Al Rajhi’s Overdrive Racing Toyota holding the interim lead of both the stage and rally.
Lategan began the day in third place but quickly made inroads into the lead and seized the advantage with around 200km left.
The South African, alongside navigator Brett Cummings, ended up second on the stage, just over four minutes behind Al Rajhi but now has a 4m45s margin over the Saudi driver.
That was despite stopping briefly in the dunes to be sick.
Five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah did not have the best of days in his Dacia Sandrider and dropped time to both Al Rajhi and Lategan.
He and Edouard Boulanger sit third in the overall standings, 11m14s off the lead and only 30 seconds clear of the impressive car debutants Toby Price and Sam Sunderland, who made it three Toyota Hilux Evos in the top four positions.
M-Sport Ford’s Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist rounded out the top five, 13m16s off the lead following a difficult 48-hour chrono for the team.
Ekström is the leading Ford in fifth place behind a trio of Toyotas and Al-Attiyah's Dacia
“Yesterday was smooth [for us] but today was really eventful,” Ekström said. “There is still a long way to go of course, but I think we lost around 15 minutes to the leader, which is not great.
“It was a really hard stage but at least we are at the finish, and we will keep fighting.”
Team-mates Carlos Sainz and Nani Roma both encountered dramas, with the former now over an hour off the lead following his crash on Sunday, while Roma hit mechanical trouble this morning. The double Dakar winner has had to wait for the M-Sport assistance truck before recommencing.
Elsewhere, Toyota Gazoo Racing were in the wars as a collision between team-mates Giniel de Villiers and Saood Variawa amid thick dust caused ‘significant damage’ to both cars. The incident occurred near the end of the stage, although both crews emerged uninjured. There was also a major delay for X-raid Mini JCW’s Guillaume de Mévius who spent more than 90 minutes making repairs to his car.
But the real mover in the stage was Loeb, who ended Sunday over half an hour down on the fastest time before producing an inspired run in his Dacia Sandrider.
The nine-time World Rally champion took seven minutes out of Al Rajhi by the 739km marker and continued to whittle that down over the remaining 200km to end up just 13m08s adrift by the finish.
It means that Loeb has limited the damage of Sunday’s ventilator issue which caused him and navigator Fabian Lurquin to stop twice on the stage, and now sit sixth in the overall classification, 18m56s off the lead.
Loeb has limited the time lost in the first part of the chrono with a strong second half
Having seemingly seen his victory hopes disappear at the start of the chrono, Loeb and Lurquin could still be in the hunt with 10 stages remaining.
“It was a very long and difficult stage for us,” Loeb said. “We had an electrical problem that we had to stop for 37 minutes in the stage. So, from that point, we thought that we would not be able to fix it and that we would have to retire, but finally with Pablo we found a way to restart the car and in the end it worked really.
“The car was really good, we recovered nearly 20 minutes so it’s better than we expected yesterday. At one point we thought we were going to retire, but now it seems that we are back in the rally.
“Today I am happy; yesterday I was not.”
While Loeb was able to make significant gains, the same could not be said for his Dacia Sandriders team-mate Cristina Gutiérrez who was forced to stop during the second half of the chrono with a steering rack issue.
“It was not an easy stage, yesterday we were happy with the teamwork that we had, helping Séb,” Gutiérrez Herrero said.
“My second day was a little bit worse because we had to leave the stage due to a steering rack issue, which we are now investigating. We need to see what happened, and this way we can know if we need to reinforce the parts for the other guys.”
