The eighth stage of the 2024 Dakar promised to be one of the most complicated of this second week of the toughest race in the world, but the Spanish driver concluded it in a very positive way, increasing his lead over Sebastien Loeb, thanks also to the difficulties met by the French rival on the 458 kilometer route.
The nine-time WRC world champion had navigation difficulties and lost precious minutes, which dropped him to around 25 minutes behind Carlos Sainz, who spoke to the media, including Motorsport.com, immediately after getting out of the car and consolidating his lead with just four days to go.
The Audi driver told how the special went, finishing in fourth place and when asked if it was a response to his rival's victory in the previous stage, he replied: “Loeb. He lost I don't know how many minutes, but this is the Dakar. Some days they go one way and some days the other.”
“It was a completely different stage between the first and second part. The first part was sandy, with dunes, not many but some dunes, and the truth is that Loeb was quite fast there,” continued the Spaniard. “Then the second part was completely different, with a lot of stones and very open slopes where the further back you are, the better.”
“Today we had no navigation problems, we didn't have a puncture and the truth is that Lucas (Cruz, his co-driver) did a good job. We are satisfied with the stage because we managed to recover some time, and now there is a day less”, commented Carlos Sainz after the eighth special stage of the 2024 Dakar.
As for the situation in the general classification, the Spaniard is the leader, with a good margin that he hopes to manage: “At the moment there are four days left, three very long ones with the last three being rocks, and we are seeing that there are many differences Every day things happen, many situations arise, so we have to continue like this.”
However, there may have been concerns in some places, which would have tipped the scales in favor of the Audi driver: “We hit so many difficult spots that I don't even know where Sebastien got lost. I know we were doing quite well, there were moments when there were no tracks and we were making our own trajectory: there were no signs left by anyone, and that always causes a lot of anxiety.”
When asked if he has a plan or if he hopes to receive help from one of his teammates, the Spaniard said that they still have to prepare it, but he seems to already have a pretty clear idea: “We have to prepare the team strategy, we have to think about it, but it would definitely be nice to have a car behind us.”
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