Dakar | Car, Stage 1: De Mevius surprise. Prodrive already in trouble

The Dakar 2024 immediately offers the first surprise. The first stage of this edition ended up in the hands of Guillaume De Mevius, driver of the Overdrive Racing team and at the wheel of a private Toyota GR Hilux T1U with which he rose to the top of the first general classification in the Car class.

The Belgian driver thus obtained his first great victory in the Dakar, preceding one of the legends of the most famous rally raid in the world, namely Carlos Sainz with the first Audi RS Q e-tron.

De Mevius was able to set a crazy pace for all over 400 kilometers of the stage, the timed ones, putting everyone behind him. For Toyota, although not directly, it is the first victory in this edition of the Dakar, beating Sainz's Audi by 1'44″.

For the Spaniard of the German team it is an excellent result: having started beyond 40th place, Carlos passed through the start of the stage, among the dunes and the dust raised by the competitors who started just before him. After the understandable sly start, Sainz increased his pace and finished in second place. An excellent recovery that puts a patch on yesterday's terrible stage, the Prologue, which seemed to have put his Dakar uphill.

The Toyota Gazoo Racing team, the official team, can console itself with the third place of Giniel De Villiers, 6 minutes behind Sainz and just 40 seconds faster than the MINI John Cooper Works of Vaidotas Zala. The Lithuanian from the X-Raid team Arijus was faster than Romain Dumas, with the Toyota Hilux from the Rebellion Racing team.

Lucas Moraes is the second driver for the Toyota Gazoo Racing team ahead of teammate Guy David Botterill. An excellent day for the official Japanese team, even if one of the two spearheads, Seth Quintero, was unable to replicate the great performance achieved yesterday. The American was in difficulty from halfway through the stage, finishing in 21st position.

Yazeed Al Rajhi, one of the most anticipated private individuals of this edition after the excellent result last year, started in eighth place ahead of Methieu Serradori, driver of the official Century Racing team with the first CR7-T. Mattias Ekstroem instead finished the stage in tenth place with the second official Audi RS Q e-tron after winning yesterday's Prologue.

Beyond the top 10, there have already been the first twists and turns which have seen at least 3 big favorites in difficulty for the final victory of this edition of the rally raid. The first of these is Sébastien Loeb, one of the two spearheads of Prodrive, who stopped in 20th place, over 22 minutes behind the leader of the first Dakar classification. Immediately behind was Seth Quintero, already mentioned, while the reigning champion Nasser Al-Attiyah did worse, in 22nd position. The Qatari is 25 minutes behind De Mevius, due to an unusual, disappointing, but still recoverable start.

It is certain that both Loeb and Al-Attiyah will have to adopt a very different tactic than the one initially thought of, that is, push through all the next stages and make up ground to avoid ending up out of contention from the first week of the race. The same goes for Mister Dakar, Stéphane Peterhansel, even 24th.

Dakar 2024 – Stage 1 – General classification