The lake bypassed and the Spaniard's full-throttle 'cuckoo'
Carlos Sainz And Sebastien Loeb they will be the great opponents for the conquest of the 46th edition of the Dakar. The Spaniard leads the general classification at the end of the first week and has a 29 minute advantage over the Alsatian, between the two there is another Audi, that of Mattias Ekstrom, who pays 20 minutes over his brand mate .
Sainz and Loeb reached the finish line separated by just two minutes in favor of the Prodrive driver at the end of the race 48 hour stopwatch with a total time exceeding seven hours. The two minutes in favor of Loeb gave the nine-time world champion the satisfaction of having won an epic stage, but tomorrow this honor will transform into the burden of having to open the stage with Sainz who will be able to exploit the track.
On the second day of the 48-hour time trial, the two former teammates from Citroen's time in the WRC when Sainz was at the end of his career and Loeb was about to write Rally history were the protagonists of duels full of smiles. “I was behind Carlos and I went around a dry lake to overtake him – Loeb told The Team – then he reached me and stopped at the same height as me at window level to make me 'cuckoo' and then step heavily on the accelerator, leaving me there. I can only imagine how angry he was at the way I had passed him by earlier“.
Loeb has great admiration for the Dakar that Sainz is competing at the ripe old age of 61: “The old man never gives up – he added – Thirty minutes late in the standings is a long time, but at least we're still in the game.”. The Alsatian, in fact, had to face several problems in the first week of the raid, especially regarding punctures. From tomorrow he will try to attack to take the fourth Dakar of his career from his former Citroen teammate. For Loeb it would be the 'first time' in a Dakar which has always eluded him for now.
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