Riyadh (Al Ittihad)
Bahrain Red Extreme star Sebastien Loeb set a new Dakar Rally record today, with his sixth consecutive stage win in Saudi Arabia.
Loeb produced another impressive performance in the Prodrive Hunter, and with co-driver Fabian Lorquin, he surpassed the previous best streak of five consecutive Dakar stage victories, previously recorded by Ari Vatanen during the Paris-Dakar Rally in Africa in 1989.
The performance of the nine-time World Rally Champion was very distinguished among the sand dunes of the Empty Quarter, as he won incomparably in the penultimate stage of the rally, which has a distance of 154 km and extends from Shaybah to Hofuf, ahead of a difference of 5 minutes and 28 seconds from the leader of the overall rally Nasser Attia.
Loeb’s dominance over the past six days’ stages came to underscore the overall strength and ability of the Prodrive Hunter in harsh desert conditions, putting the second consecutive Dakar Rally runner-up in Dammam tomorrow within his grasp.
His result might have been better, had it not been for a series of punctures and other setbacks suffered by Loeb in the past week, and Al-Attiyah, who received a one-minute penalty today and now leads the rally by 1 hour, 21 minutes and 42 seconds in his Toyota, is on the verge of his fifth rally win Dakar.
Loeb’s success in the seventh stage overall in this year’s event, the eighth for Prodrive Hunter cars after Guerlain Chicheret’s victory earlier, had a 14 minutes and 8 seconds advantage over Toyota’s Brazilian Lucas Moraes, who finished third.
Chicheré and co-driver Alex Winock set the eighth fastest time of the day, finishing 11th in the overall rally standings in the Bahrain Xtreme Prodrive Hunter after a series of bad luck, having won the Rally Morocco title three months earlier.
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