Ford duo Nani Roma and Carlos Sainz have moved to the head of the Dakar field after stage nine, with key rivals running into trouble on the first leg of the second marathon stage.
Henk Lategan had been on a charge on Monday, narrowly missing out on a stage win to fellow Toyota Gazoo Racing driver Saood Variawa but moving up to third place regardless and eating into Nasser Al-Attiyah’s lead.
But Toyota’s main hope of overall victory on the Dakar suffered power steering failure early on stage nine, losing 20 minutes as he fought his way to the pit stop zone – where another 14 minutes were lost changing the broken steering.
“It’s extremely difficult in these cars because the wheels are so big, so you have to have massive power to even turn the wheel,” Lategan explained. “So we were just cruising along.”
Henk Lategan had a nightmare stage on Tuesday – but miraculously remains in contention for victory, thanks to trouble befalling others
His day got even worse: he suffered multiple punctures, got lost between waypoints and hit a bush while stuck in Sébastien Loeb’s dust, which forced him to stop and kick the windscreen out of his Toyota Hilux. He finished the stage wearing goggles to cope with the dust.
“A bit of a disaster of a day, to be honest,” was Lategan’s assessment. “We have a long list of bad days but this one is close to the top.”
Al-Attiyah and Mattias Ekström, who had been Ford’s leading contender for much of the rally in second overall, both ran into navigational problems around 280 kilometres into the stage. They lost 12 and 18 minutes respectively in trying to find their way to the following waypoint, opening the door for Sainz and Roma to charge ahead.
That should also have opened the door for Sébastien Loeb to mount a challenge in the second Dacia: instead, he too suffered a power steering problem – but crucially it was after the pit stop zone, not before like Lategan’s.
A key opportunity for Loeb to make inroads on the leaders was thwarted by broken power steering
“We could have made a good move today,” said Loeb. “We had to do 180 kilometres like that, it was impossible to drive.”
Sainz had done enough – despite also briefly getting confused with his navigation – to move into the lead. But there was one last sting in the tail: he received a 1m10s speeding penalty, which meant Roma took the lead instead – despite his Raptor suffering three punctures during stage nine.
The top three remains extremely tight: Sainz is only 57s behind rally leader Roma, with Al-Attiyah a mere 13s adrift of Sainz.
Despite suffering what appeared to be a disastrous day, Lategan remains firmly in victory contention: he is only 6m13s off the top spot. Toyota’s lead contender has 5m6s in hand over the third Raptor driven by Ekström in fifth place, while Loeb is 21m06s away from the lead.
The youngest Goczał, previously a Dakar winner in the SSV class, scored his first outright stage win
Toby Price, a two-time Dakar winner in the bikes race, has moved up to seventh overall on his second Dakar start in the Ultimate class – and is the only other Toyota in the top 10 alongside Lategan.
All four Dacias are now in the top 10 overall: reigning World Rally-Raid champion Lucas Moraes and Cristina Gutiérrez are eighth and 10th, split by Mathieu Serradori’s Century.
21-year-old Eryk Goczał secured his first Dakar stage win aboard a customer Hilux on stage nine, beating his uncle Michal to the fastest time in the sister Energylandia machine.
