The twelfth and last stage of the forty-sixth Dakar Rally occurred Friday with a brief dash in Yanbu. With how brief the leg was at simply 175 kilometres in Selective Sections, not a lot might actually be achieved for these too far again within the general to have a shot on the victory, so essentially the most they might do was a minimum of exit with a stage win.
Sébastien Loeb was one in all these circumstances as a disastrous Stage #11 doomed his probabilities of catching Carlos Sainz within the general, dropping him to 3rd and over an hour and forty minutes again. Whereas he held off Guillaume de Mévius for the Stage #12 win by 5 minutes, it was not sufficient to overhaul him for second and positively nowhere close to getting near Sainz. Regardless, he ends the rally with an Final-leading 5 stage wins.
“It’s lastly a podium for us, so I might say it’s not so dangerous once you look to yesterday after we are sitting on a stone and ready for the truck. On the finish, it’s not too dangerous,” Loeb acknowledged. “I feel our likelihood in opposition to Audi had been fairly small once you see the levels we had and so they had been driving two automobiles collectively and so forth. Yeah, we tried. We misplaced the second place. We’re third, however lastly on the end line so not too dangerous.”
Others got here up simply brief of their pursuits. Alexandre Giroud defeated Manuel Andújar for the stage win by fifteen seconds, however he was unable to stop Andújar from killing his hopes of a 3rd straight Dakar as he entered Friday trailing by eight minutes. Likewise, defending Rally2 winner Romain Dumontier completed runner-up and a minute forward of the fifth-placed Harith Noah, although he would have wanted to make up 5 extra minutes to repeat.
Jérôme de Sadeleer beat Xavier de Soultrait for the ultimate spot on the SSV stage podium, although solely by twenty-four seconds and thus did not crack his two-and-a-half-minute benefit. De Soultrait’s Sébastien Loeb Racing team-mate Florent Vayssade scored his first stage win on 4 wheels.
Though most general winners had been just about determined, the largest growth got here in Challenger. Mitch Guthrie went into Friday with a 25:07 hole on Cristina Gutiérrez; given there have been nearer battles elsewhere together with each FIM class just for a lead change to not happen, all he actually wanted to do was full the stage with out challenge. Sadly, that didn’t occur for him as mechanical troubles plagued him at each the beginning and finish, which his fellow Purple Bull driver capitalised on.
“Didn’t go as we needed. Robust, powerful day,” mentioned Guthrie. “We had been proper to start with of the stage and misplaced all energy simply on a straightaway. Kellon (Walch) and I hopped out and turbo hose simply got here off. Not a giant deal, however it was actually, actually powerful to get in there. Every part was sizzling. It was method again up in there. Took us about 25 minutes to get a hose clamp on there and get the whole lot again going. From there, we pushed on. We knew it could be actually shut. We had a 25-minute lead going into the stage so pushed exhausting after which about thirty kilometres from the end, the gearbox let go on us. Undecided what occurred there. Robust day.
“We bought towed to the end so we nonetheless bought second within the rally however it appears like final place ith it going this fashion. Positively sucks. Going to maintain our heads excessive. That’s racing, however powerful one to swallow. We gave it the whole lot, Kellon did superb, crew did nice, simply not our day right this moment.”
The Checkered Flag will produce particular person reviews for every of the eleven courses over the remainder of January. Keep tuned.
