Sainz' 16th overall win in the Dakar Rally came at the right time for the Volkswagen racer, as his overall rival for the win Nasser Al-Attiyah had taken him almost 6 minutes in the previous stage. During yesterday's outing, the Qatari driver from Volkswagen only managed the 4th best time of the afternoon – behind teammate Mark Miller – some one minute and 40 seconds behind Sainz.
“No problems. 80 kilometres after the start we caught up with Nasser. We stayed behind him because he couldn’t hear the Sentinel and we couldn’t get past. It was quite a slow and winding route, mostly lanes. What I did first was to get close to Nasser, then I stayed around at 1’40. After that, from the 80-km point onwards, we were driving in the dust,” said Sainz after the stage.
“It was very dangerous at that speed. There were a lot of corners, a lot of slippery stuff. For me it was not a good feeling and I’m really happy to have finished this stage without any problems. For me today it was very stressful because I opened the road. (...) But it’s okay, I’m quite happy with today. It’s normal when you start as first car to lose a lot of time. Tomorrow there will be some off-road and more dunes. It will be good for me,” said Al-Attiyah.
Here is the overall classification, with 4 clocked stages to go until the finish line.
1. Carlos Sainz (Volkswagen) 36h34m45s
2. Nasser Al-Attiyah (Volkswagen) + 10:06
3. Mark Miller (Volkswagen) + 28:19
4. Stephane Peterhansel (BMW) + 2:14:20
5. Guerlain Chicherit (BMW) + 2:30:59
6. Carlos Sousa (Mitsubishi) + 3:54:05
7. Giniel de Villiers (Volkswagen) + 4:46:13
8. Guilherme Spinelli (Mitsubishi) + 5:25:08
9. Orlando Terranova (Mitsubishi) + 5:40:31
10. Robby Gordon (Hummer) + 5:43:56
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