Carlos Sainz’s debut in the Ford Raptor at Rally Morocco, the traditional warm-up event for the Dakar, was compromised after failing to start the second stage of the rally.
M-Sport co-developed and built the new Raptor alongside Ford Performance and it had won on its competitive debut, the Hungarian Baja, in August with Nani Roma at the wheel.
But Sainz, the most successful driver in Ford’s lineup with four Dakar victories and 42 stage wins, failed to even start the second stage, realistically ending any hopes of victory on his rally-raid debut with the blue oval.
“Unfortunately, this morning, I fired up the car and we saw an issue with the data,” explained Sainz. “The team decided to check it properly and not take the risk to go out with the car and break something at this point of the rally, or of our preparation, [which] is not the right thing to do. We decided to quit and this is what we are doing.
“I hope I can continue tomorrow and put in some mileage in the car. Yesterday was a positive day even if we still have some small issues. We are happy in general, so let’s see how Mattias [Ekström] goes today and see if he can win the stage.”
Sainz's debut in the Ford Raptor T1+ has been curtailed by technical trouble
Ekström though could only muster the 10th-fastest time in the sister Raptor, however still climbed a position to seventh overall when early pacesetter Mathieu Serradori’s Century CR7-T suddenly dropped pace after the penultimate waypoint.
Dacia’s debut of its new Sandrider continues to go well: Nasser Al-Attiyah, who is also currently in position to win this year’s World Rally-Raid Championship title, leads the way and was second fastest on Tuesday, 13s behind Toyota’s Lucas Moraes.
There was more good news for Al-Attiyah in his quest for a third world title in a row – both Yazeed Al-Rajhi (Toyota) and Guerlain Chicherit (X-Raid Mini) struggled for pace on stage two, especially the former who dropped 13 minutes and fell from second to sixth overall.
Sébastien Loeb was third fastest and climbed to fifth overall in the second Dacia Sandrider; Guillaume de Mevius benefitted from Sainz’s demise to take second on his debut in the new petrol-powered X-Raid Mini and Moraes took third with his stage-winning effort.
A fatal accident occurred on the opening stage of the rally. Bike competitor Frédéric Baudry crashed in the dunes 60 miles into stage one. Though he was attended to by doctors from one of the medical helicopters, he later died after being transferred to Zagora hospital.
