The 48 Hour Stage was one of the big attractions of the 2024 edition of the Dakar, and the riders ventured through the dunes of the Empty Quarter for two days to reach the Shubaytah bivouac again, from where they will then take a plane to Riyadh for a day of rest in the Saudi capital.
However, the important thing was the times over the 549 timed kilometers in the soft desert sand, on which Sebastien Loeb took another stage victory, becoming the seventh in the entire history of the Dakar, although tied with the sixth-placed Hiroshi Masuoka: “It was a good day for us, a good stage, without any problems.”
“The first part of yesterday's special was very long, more than 400 kilometres. I tried to take it calmly and not be too hard on the car, because it's very tough on the mechanics on the dunes”, explained the racing legend. WRC. “The strategy was the right one. What makes Audi's strategy better is that, by losing nine minutes, they were quite far behind and, moreover, Al-Attiyah in front opened the track very well for them.”
“So they weren't as close as we expected. We had to do the stage, we won it and we will probably move up in the general classification,” said the Frenchman from Bahrain Raid Extreme after finishing the 48 Hour Stage of the 2024 Dakar Rally. “Not it's bad, we're still fighting. All in all, we've only lost time twice in this first week.”
“Apart from that, we had a good week, but the pace is still very high. Everyone accelerated to the maximum and the level is very high,” said Sebastien Loeb. “At this rate, it's normal for breakages and accidents to happen. For now everything is going well for us, we just need to continue like this and find a solution to the punctures for the last stages with the stones. That's all.”
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