Dacia appears to be down to one car in the battle for Dakar Rally victory after electrical problems cost Sébastien Loeb more than half an hour on the first day of the 48-hour chrono stage.
Loeb and navigator Fabian Lurquin had been running strongly in second place after deliberately slowing at the end of the opening stage in order to gain a more favorable road position for stage two.
But the nine-time World Rally champion was forced to stop twice, the first time at the 409km marker and the second shortly after restarting.
The net result is that Loeb and Lurquin have dropped nearly 40 minutes on the stage which has effectively ruled them out of the victory hunt for another year.
Tiphanie Isnard, team principal for the Dacia Sandriders, confirmed an electrical issue but said that an exact root cause and solution could take some time
“We are waiting for more details, but we think we have identified an electronic issue,” she said. “It is a tough diagnosis to make without telemetry or engineers on site to carry out our processes, but Sébastien managed to get going again.
“He is still in the race and that is the main thing. Hats off to Cristina [Gutiérrez] and [navigator] Pablo [Moreno Huete] who provided their assistance in this team effort.”
Loeb has lost 40 minutes on the first part of the chrono stage, effectively ending his Dakar victory bid
A tactical decision by Dacia meant that Gutiérrez also shipped around half an hour at the designated service area at the 166km marker. The team made running repairs to the car but decided to hold Gutiérrez so that all three Sandriders could drive the stage together.
Isnard told La Chaine l’Équipe that Gutiérrez would therefore act as support to Loeb to ensure both cars reached the end of the stage.
“When electronics are concerned, it’s always serious,” Isnard explained. “We can’t easily change the parts and we have to try and diagnose the problems from far away and we can’t send our engineers to the stage because it’s the 48-hour chrono. The first thing we need to do is find out what the issue is.
“It is quite clear for us; Cristina is in a learning phase, and she is doing a fantastic job. But at the end of the day, it’s a team sport and she is the wingman for Séb in this stage. She is there right now for assistance.”
The six bivouacs tonight forbid any official assistance truck presence, meaning that any mechanical issues or damage are the responsibility of the crews alone. Assistance trucks do follow the competitors as normal in the stage but start approximately 1hr55 behind the caravan.
Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz’s hopes of winning a fifth Dakar Rally have also been dealt a serious blow after he rolled his M-Sport Ford Raptor.
Sainz had been fighting for the overall lead of the rally before the accident, which happened at the end of a section of dunes around 327km into the stage which will cover nearly 1000km over two days.
Both Sainz and navigator Lucas Cruz were unhurt and able to continue, but the car suffered significant rear-end bodywork damage after being tipped onto its roof.
M-Sport team-mate Mitch Guthrie Jr stopped to help Sainz right the sister Raptor, which subsequently lost 40 minutes.
At the 452km marker, just before the first of the six rest camps, Sainz trailed stage leader Yazeed Al Rajhi by 32m12s in the overall classification and almost 42 minutes down on the stage.
Al Rajhi holds slender lead but there is still over 300km to run tomorrow
Al Rajhi leads Al-Attiyah at half-distance
At the halfway point of the stage, Al Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk’s Overdrive Racing Toyota Hilux holds the provisional lead, albeit only fractionally ahead of Dacia’s Nasser Al-Attiyah and Edoaurd Boulanger. The pair are currently separated by just over a minute, with M-Sport Ford’s Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist third, nine minutes adrift ahead of the resumption of play tomorrow morning. Prologue winner Henk Lategan is fourth, having seen his 10-minute speeding penalty from stage one rescinded before the start of the chrono.
In the provisional overall classification, Al Rajhi heads Al-Attiyah by 1m19s with Lategan only just over two minutes off the lead.
Ekström is a further 1m32 behind Lategan while the second of the TGR South Africa Hiluxes of Guy David Botterill and Dennis Murphy lie fifth.
Former bikers Toby Price and Sam Sunderland produced another sensational performance in their Overdrive Racing Toyota to place seventh provisionally on the stage and sixth overall. The double Dakar winners had run as high as second in the stage which put them in the overall podium hunt before slipping back.
Road openers Seth Quintero and Dennis Zenz dropped 47 minutes on the stage, while second on the road Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winoq lost 40 minutes.
The leading crews reached break camp E after the 618km marker, which leaves around 342km left to run tomorrow before returning to the Bisha bivouac.
Interim Standings (after stage 2a)
1 Yazeed Al Rajhi/Timo Gottschalk (Overdrive Racing Toyota) 11h45m24s
2 Nasser Al-Attiyah/Edouard Boulanger (Dacia Sandriders) +1m19s
3 Henk Lategan/Brett Cummings (Toyota Gazoo Racing) +2m12s
4 Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist (M-Sport Ford) +3m44s
5 Guy David Botterill/Dennis Murphy (Toyota Gazoo Racing) +8m07s
6 Toby Price/Sam Sunderland (Overdrive Racing Toyota) +9m05s
7 Nani Roma/Alex Haro Bravo (M-Sport Ford) +14m29s
8 Guillaume de Mévius/Mathieu Baumel (X-raid Mini JCW) +17m40s
9 Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz (Toyota Gazoo Racing) +17m45s
10 Brian Baragwanath/Leonard Cremer (Century Racing CR7) +20m45s
18 Sébastien Loeb/Fabian Lurquin (Dacia Sandriders) +33m33s
22 Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (M-Sport Ford) +49m33s
