Audi dominates the Dakar
The 46th edition of the Dakar arrived at the rest day after a first week that was nothing short of challenging with the Marathon stage and, above all, the 48-hour time trial in the desert. The latter ended Nasser Al-Attiyah's hopes of making it three consecutive victories to equal Lagrue and Vatanen.
The Qatari broke his steering bearing yesterday and needed technical 'rescue' wasting over two hours and from tomorrow he declared that he will be at the service of his teammate Sebastien Loeb in a far from easy chase against the leader Carlos Sainz.
Al-Attiyah had given the Audis three days before “go back home”, but this curse backfired on the Prodrive driver. In fact, Sainz has a 20 minute advantage over his teammate Mattias Ekstrom and 29 over Sebastien Loeb, who, however, will have to lead the way in tomorrow's stagea condition that Sainz will be able to exploit to his advantage.
Carlos Sainz he made this assessment at the end of a decidedly positive first week for him and for Audi, in which the main problems were simply some punctures as well as some navigation headaches: “The 48-hour time trial was very physically demanding – he said – we survived without too many complications and that's very important. The balance of the first week of the race is positive, we are leading the general classification, but we will continue to have the same approach in the second week too, that is, taking one stage at a time without looking too much at the ranking”.
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