Although his win on Sunday – his 54th career overall in the Dakar Rally – did not get him much closer to the leading pack of Volkswagens, Peterhansel did climb up to 4th overall in the car standings, where he is now more than two hours behind leader Carlos Sainz. Although yet to win a stage this year, Sainz came very close to it yesterday, when he finished the stage only 45 seconds behind the Frenchman.
“This was a very difficult stage and we had to drive so carefully on the rocks to avoid problems. There was also a lot of navigation, difficult navigation as well. We also found the dunes at the end tricky to get past, especially since we didn't stop to let the tires down a bit. Since we had high tire pressure for the stones, we had to cross the dunes with 3 kilos, which isn't simple,” said Peterhansel after the stage.
Sainz, on the other hand, put an additional 3 and a half minutes between him and main title rival & teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah at the end of Stage 8, as the Qatari only managed a 5th place yesterday. The latter will have one more shot at getting closer to the Spaniard in the desert stages, as tomorrow schedules the last round in the Atacama desert in Chile.
“I had a few scares today. I had 2 punctures so afterwards I didn’t have a spare wheel, but there was still 180 kilometres to go. So I kept control over my speed and tried to get to the finishing line safe and sound. It was a good stage because I’ve increased the gap between me Nasser (Al-Attiyh) a bit. But tomorrow, he will be starting behind me and I’m sure he will catch me up,” said Sainz.
VW completed the Top 5 yesterday through Mark Miller, Giniel de Villier and Nasser Al-Attiyah respectively, ahead of Mitsubishi duo Orlando Terranova and Carlos Sousa.
In the overall standings, Sainz still leads from Al-Attiyah by 14:35 minutes, while Mark Miller rests in 3rd place, 8 more minutes behind the Qatari.
Google News