Peterhansel therefore recorded his 53rd win overall in the Dakar Rally and climbed two positions in the car's classification. Although spending most of the first week of action in 1st place overall, the BMW driver experienced transmission problems throughout yesterday's stage and lost more than 2 hours to the leading group of VWs – Carlos Sainz, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mark Miller.
His effort on Thursday got him closer to the Top 4 – approximately 30 minutes behind – but his overall deficit towards race leader Carlos Sainz is still very much the same. And that's because the Spaniard was very close to winning his first stage this year yesterday, as he only came 47 seconds behind Peterhansel in 2nd place.
Mark Miller ended another day on the stage podium for VW, spending most of the afternoon in the runner-up spot. After a while, he got passed by his teammate Sainz and eventually had to settle for 3rd overall, almost 9 minutes behind Peterhansel.
The news of the day came in the Open category, where American racer Robby Gordon no longer took the honors. A winning regular in the category, Gordon had to watch his Hummer teammate Robert Baldwin squeeze his first Open win in career, as the latter finished the day with the 15th best time in the scoring reports.
In the overall classification, Sainz still has a comfortable lead ahead of 15:24 over Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and 17:47 over his second teammate Mark Miller.
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