Carlos Sainz arrives as leader on the rest day in the 2024 Dakar Rally. The Madrid driver, who aspires to build his fourth Touareg at the age of 61, gave a lesson in strategy and driving in the 48-hour immersion in the inhospitable Rub Al desert Khali and emerged as the main winner of this new, unprecedented format against the clock. The Audi leader finished second in the stage, 2m01s behind Sebastien Loeb, but the result puts him back in the lead of the general standings with more than 20 minutes ahead of his Swedish teammate Mattias Ekström and 30 over the Frenchman from Prodrive. The nine-time World Rally Champion (WRC), who is seeking his first title in the premier event of rally-raid, will be his main enemy when the event resumes this Sunday.
“The day after tomorrow we will see if it is a mistake or a success, anything is possible,” commented Sainz before entering the cinematographic landscape that occupies more than a quarter of the territory of Saudi Arabia. This Friday morning it was abundantly clear that he and Lucas Cruz, his co-driver, hit the nail on the head when they purposely lost time in the fifth special to start late and count on the rivals' lines on the sand to face the 549 stage. kilometers dune up, dune down.
“It's good to be here, but there's still a long way to go. “I'm happy with how everything has gone so far,” reflected the new overall leader. “It was a difficult special, very physical for everyone, but we survived. Being leaders on the day of rest is a good balance of the first week. Now it's time to move forward as we started, day by day and with humility,” he added. Cruz detailed that both decided to spend a few seconds in camp D to take advantage of the more compact sand at dawn and the brighter light than at dusk on the first day, where they could have decided to advance to bivouac E while night fell in the desert. . The two-day stage, with the return to the essence of the tent, the sleeping bag and little more than a military ration to get through the evening, has been more notable for the discards and images next to bonfires than for anything else. stuff.
Nasser Al-Attiyah, the great rival and neighbor in these lands, a specialist on the dunes, lost more than two and a half hours compared to the Spaniard when he finally crossed the finish line. The failure of the steering at kilometer 530 put an end to the pursuit of his third consecutive crown and thus ruled out one of Sainz's most feared rivals, who from the first day avoided the psychological confrontation that the Qatari proposed. “The Audis will last three days,” the owner of five Touaregs even said. “Everyone is free to give their opinion,” the Spaniard threw out. The desert finally claimed his chances and that of other favorites such as Yazeed Al Rajhi (Toyota) and Stéphane Peterhansel, the first by accident and the second due to a failure in the hydraulic system of the German prototype. The Japanese vehicles of Guillaume De Mevius and Lucas Moraes, fourth and fifth classified, are now more than an hour behind the Madrid native's Audi.
“It was nice, and we had a good time. We went to sleep early,” Sainz smiled in Shubaytah when they asked him about the night outdoors in the Empty Quarter (empty quadrant), as the territory that Al-Attiyah defined last year as his garden is known. The man from Madrid had fun setting up his tent and chatting with his colleagues from the caravan in the middle of the desert, and in the morning, after getting up early at six, he ate a can of sardines before resuming his march and closing the door in style. first week of rally. In the wasteland where the Qatari triumphed in 2023, it seems that it is now the Spaniard who emerges as a reference and the main favorite to take victory in the final finish in Yanbu. For that there are still 3,714 kilometers where many things can happen.
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