The satisfaction for having won Stage 2 of the Dakar 2022 did not last long for Sébastien Loeb. The driver of the Bahrain Raid Xtreme team, today, went through a difficult day to say the least.
Everything happened in the first kilometers of the stage, one of the shortest in this 44th edition of the most famous rally raid in the world. First a puncture, then here’s the problem that compromised his day.
According to what Loeb said at the end of the stage, on the Hunter of the Prodrive team the propshaft that activates the four-wheel drive of the British car broke.
Loeb, therefore, found himself having to tackle 250 kilometers with just 2-wheel drive and, in today’s stage, all-wheel drive made the difference. The Alsatian lost 33 minutes to the winner of the stage, Carlos Sainz, but what is worse is the time lost by Nasser Al-Attiyah, leader of the general car classification.
“It was a bad day. We broke the driveshaft, or at least I think that was it. But we only had traction on the front wheels after just 10 kilometers from the start of today’s stage,” Loeb said at the end of the race. today’s stage.
# 211 Bahrain Raid Xtreme Prodrive: Sebastien Loeb, Fabian Lurquin
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
“We did 250 kilometers like that. We climbed over the dunes and with only 2 wheel drive it was really very difficult. So, in the end, I’m disappointed.”
“I’m happy to have reached the end of the stage having lost only 33 minutes. Things could have been much worse than that, but we can’t do anything about it, that’s the way it is.”
Now Al-Attiyah has an advantage of over 37 minutes against Loeb, the first rival for the victory of this 44th edition of the Dakar. For this reason Séb admitted that he was in a complex situation. It will be difficult to recover from the Qatari of the Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa team, despite the fact that many stages are still missing at the end of the hostilities.
“The duel with Nasser will be very difficult. He is already far away, in front of everyone. We cannot put pressure on him as we were trying to do. That’s how things are,” concluded Loeb, bitterly.
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