Dakar | Sainz: “Forced to push because Loeb recovers”

The ninth stage of the 2024 Dakar saw Sébastien Loeb working hard for a new victory that brings him closer to Carlos Sainz in the general classification. The Frenchman is only twenty minutes behind, which may seem like a long time, but any mistake or mechanical failure could tip the scales one way or the other.

For his part, the Spanish driver managed to minimize the minutes that the Frenchman managed to carve out, despite the Frenchman having punctured twice, and when he got out of the RS Q e-tron, he was very confident, albeit cautious, that he could continue like this until the end in Yanbu: “The stage was very stressful, because we found a special stage where there were huge rocks, many test areas where the road disappeared and therefore you had to fall in the right place.”

“Apart from a couple of points where we hesitated, we did a great job, we did well and we lost four minutes, but to go and open in the second half we are quite happy and satisfied to be another day here without problems”, said the Spaniard, who will have the help of his teammates, Mattias Ekstroem and Stéphane Peterhansel.

The Frenchman will not have the support of Nasser Al Attiyah, as the Qatari has definitively withdrawn from the race, and when Carlos Sainz was asked what the plan to follow was, he replied: “The strategy will not change because Sebastien [Loeb] he's pushing very hard, he's going flat out, and so are we, logically, because otherwise he would make up more ground against me.”

“However, there are still three stages to go and we must not let our guard down, we must continue to move forward in the same way,” explained the Spaniard. “We will start second [domani] and we will try to go as fast as possible. Tomorrow evening we will think about the day after tomorrow. [Ekstroem e Peterhansel] they're far away, but tomorrow shouldn't be a special stage with big punctures.”

“It's clear that we have to get through tomorrow's stage and we will think about the past. That stage decided last year's Dakar and this year will be tough. The punctures are always the same and don't depend on the tire at all,” said the leader of the general classification of the car category with just three days to go.