Nasser Al-Attiyah and Edouard Boulanger gave the Dacia Sandrider its second victory in three races after winning the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, round two of the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship.

Lucas Moraes and Armand Monleon headed a Toyota Gazoo Racing two-three with Seth Quintero and Dennis Zenz taking the final step of the podium.

A delighted Al-Attiyah said: “It’s a really good feeling and I’m very happy to win the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. It was a big push from us this week and thanks to The Dacia Sandriders. We were coming here to win the race and lead the championship to make it easier for the next race. We have a really good car, and the team is very strong. We feel sorry for Seb for what happened yesterday, but this is the situation, and I am really happy to win this race for The Dacia Sandriders and all partners and people who are supporting us. The speed was very high from every competitor, we respect everyone, but we did a very good job over the last few days.”

The five-time Desert Challenge winner heads the championship standings with 91 points.

The event ended on a thrilling note as Al-Attiyah ended the penultimate stage on Wednesday with a slender 41 second lead over Moraes’ Hilux with Thursday’s final 167km stage standing between victory and defeat.

The Qatari W2RC Champion won the 11km prologue, but it was Moraes who made the early running in stage one, beating Dacia’s Sebastian Loeb by 1’01″ with Quintero finishing in third position.

Stage two saw Loeb take the stage win and the overall lead followed by Moraes and Al-Attiyah.

It was Al-Attiyah’s turn to take a stage win on SS3 and displace his French teammate at the top of the overall standings with the consistent Moraes in second and Loeb dropping to third on the scoreboard.

Wednesday was Loeb’s 51^st birthday, which is one he’d likely want to forget. The former gymnast, who is used to doing things the human body was never designed to do (like cartwheels), cartwheeled out of the rally.

“It all started when we missed a waypoint by less than 10 metres, which it looked like all our competitors had done in view of the lines we saw. We did a 360-degree turn for validation, but we were caught in our dust, missed a mini-dune and rolled off the front. Our Dacia Sandrider will be brought back to the bivouac, but we’ll have to wait for the FIA inspection to see if we can start again tomorrow”, Loeb reported.

The FIA deemed the roll cage to be too badly damaged and the birthday boy was forced to retire.

20-year-old Polish racer Eryk Goczal and Oriol Mena won the stage in their Prodrive Toyota Hilux, becoming the fourth different winner in five stages.

Al-Attiyah duly took the fastest time on the final stage on Thursday, winning the event by 2’28” from Moraes.

Behind Quintero, Juan Yacopini/Daniel Oliveras brought their Overdrive Toyota Hilux home in fourth overall, followed by Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch in their M-Sport Ford Ranger.

Guy Botterill/Dennis Murphy rounded out the top six in their Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa Hilux.

Dakar winners Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk retired at km13 in the final stage with an engine issue while Goczal’s Overdrive machine caught fire 25km further into the stage.

Mattias Ekstrom fell ill during stage two and had to withdraw from the event.

In the overall championship standings, Al-Attiyah leads from Al Rajhi, Moraes, Quintero and Henk Lategan.

The third round of the W2RC Championship is the Toyota Gazoo Racing South African Safari Rally from 18 – 24 May.

The post Nasser Al-Attiyah rides the sand in Abu Dhabi appeared first on Motorsport Week.

Stage 10: Haradh – Shubaytah  Stage 120km, liaison 520km

Stage ten may have been ‘only’ 120km, but it comprised 96% dunes, and these weren’t little heaps of sand but full-fat dunes where Saudi driver Yazeed Al Rajhi, the overall leader after Tuesday’s stage, should have been right at home.

He wasn’t, though.

Nani Roma and Alex Haro gave the new Ford Raptor its maiden Dakar stage win after grabbing the lead after the favourites ran into navigational issues and stayed there to the end. Behind the Ford, drama unfolded right at the start of the stage.

Starting first on the road, Nasser Al-Attiyah got lost as early as km 9, leaving the five-time winner languishing in 36^th and 13’39” off the front-running pace at the 45km mark.

A kilometer later, yesterday’s stage runner-up, Belgian Guillaume de Mevius/Mathieu Baumel stopped for 35 minutes to attend to their recalcitrant Mini JCW.

By km 45, Mitch Guthrie, Lucas Moraes, Seth Quintero and Juan Yacopini were all squabbling over the fastest time but it was Roma who was quickest, followed by the Toyota Gazoo Racing pair, Lucas Moraes/Armand Monleon 11 seconds slower with another superb performance coming from Brian Baragwanath/Leonard Cremer in their Century Racing CR7 holding third, 47” behind the Hilux.

A remarkable performance came from Daniel Schroeder/Henry Kohne in their WCT-Amarok who popped up with the fourth fastest time.

Al Rajhi stopped for five minutes at km 83, dropping time to Lategan, who’d started from 11^th on the road.

Moraes was pushing Roma hard, 47 seconds adrift at km 97 with Baragwanath holding on to third and Schroder having the drive of his life in fourth.

All eyes, though, were on the virtual overall leader at this point and it’s where Lategan re-took the overall lead by 1’16”over the Overdrive Hilux pair.

As the cars rolled in to the Shubaytah bivouac, Roma had done just enough to hold off the Toyota, with 18 seconds in it at the end.

Baragwanath claimed the final step of the stage podium while Schroder claimed easily his best stage result with fourth, and was just fast enough to keep Yacopini behind by 7”.

Cristina Gutierrez/Pablo Moreno was the leading Dacia Sandrider home in sixth, just under a minute ahead of the X-Raid Mini JCW of Denis Krotov/Konstantin Zhiltsov.

Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz made it home in eighth, 40’ seconds ahead of 20-year old Alliyah Koloc/Sebastien Delaunay in their Red-Lined Revo-GTR, easily the young Seychelles lady racer’s best ever stage.

Mathieu Serradori/Loic Minaudier rounded out the top ten in their Century Racing CR7.

Lategan ended the stage in 11^th place, Al Rajhi in 27^th and Al-Attiyah in 30^th. Is this strategy at play?

Overall, it has become a two-horse race between Henk Lategan and Yazeed Al Rajhi; the South African reclaimed the lead in the overall standings from Yazeed Al Rajhi. The two Toyota drivers are separated by 2′27″. Mattias Ekström remains third, while Nasser Al Attiyah dropped more than half an hour to Lategan and is now 30′21″ down.

A navigation error near the start of the special cost Al-Attiyah the five-time winner, a golden opportunity to get himself back in contention for the title. He did not mince his words: “I’m very disappointed, but what can you do? We could have had a great stage, but we’ll see what position we’re in and what we can do tomorrow. Every day is very important, and we had a good pace, but we lost a lot of time. This is the most disappointing day of my life.”

“It’s difficult for me to judge my pace in the sand. I’m used to the gravel more and I know when I’m going quickly and when I’m not. In the sand, I have no idea”, said Lategan. “We were going at a decent pace, I thought, then Martin Prokop came past us so I thought maybe we’re going a bit too slow and sped up a little bit.”

On two wheels, Michael Docherty became the second South African to win a stage, following in the footsteps of Alfie Cox, whose last victory was in 2003… 22 years ago. Interestingly, Docherty sports race number 22, making this connection even more symbolic.

The win for Michael Docherty, the second-ever Rally 2 rider in history to win a Dakar stage, after Danilo Petrucci in 2022! The South African claimed his first career victory, 1′20″ ahead of Rui Gonçalves and 2′21″ ahead of Tobias Ebster. Stefan Svitko finished fourth, 5′10″ behind, marking his best result of the year. Edgar Canet rounded out the top 5 at 5′34″. Docherty, Ebster and Canet also form the Rally 2 podium for the day, in that same order!

Tosha Schareina, second overall, was 16’31” behind Daniel Sanders, but he reckons he can still turn the tables on the leader in tomorrow’s decisive stage: “I think I [tried] to go more or less slow in the dunes to not open the stage tomorrow. I felt good, I felt really with me. Just started about two weeks racing, so yeah, that’s all. I think they told me that they put me two more minutes, so I start tomorrow behind him. But yeah, good for that. For sure, it’s so complicated in 300 K to cut [those] 17 minutes, but everything is possible.”

Overall positions (provisional)

The post Nani ‘roams’ through the dunes to stage win; Henk Lategan back in the overall lead!      appeared first on Motorsport Week.

Al Duwadimi – Al Duwadimi  stage 419km, liaison 297km

Lucas Moraes and Armand Monleon became the sixth different winner from seven stages in what turned out to be a chaotic stage from a timing point of view, hence the word “provisional” as standings could well change before the sun sets over Saudi Arabia.

The Brazilian said: “Yeah, to be honest, since we started so far behind, we were lucky because we definitely got all the tracks for us. So yeah, we didn’t have nothing to lose today, so we pushed a lot. And nice to win one more stage in the Dakar. These things are really hard to get, so happy to score some points for the championship as well. And got to keep fighting. I think now it’s going to be, maybe tomorrow it’s going to be just like this one today and then we’re going to start reaching the Empty Quarter. And there will be some strategy of course playing to not open the bigger one that we have there. But otherwise, so far so good and happy with the win.”

An official notice said “An incorrect road book note for km 158 of the special has caused several drivers at the front of the field to lose their bearings. A segment of about 20 km before and after this point will therefore be delimited at the finish of the car special at the bivouac in Al Duwadimi, erasing any gains or losses made in this part of the stage.”

Dakar leader Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings found the correct route and opened a gap while the others drove around in circles; Al Rajhi lost 14 minutes and Al Attiyah some 20 minutes, while the Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa pair found themselves opening the road. Once the chasing pack found their tracks, he bled time to his closest rivals Yazeed Al Rajhi, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mattias Ekstrom.

After the times had been adjusted, the 30-year-old South African’s lead was just 21 seconds ahead of Al Rajhi. They were, in essence severely penalized for not getting lost! “It’s a bit of a mess with the times. I’m not sure what’s going on. The official timing is showing something different. They took some of the section out of the stage. We’ll see what happens, we hope it doesn’t stay like this. It would be quite unfair because you cannot be penalized for finding the road first. It would not be right”, said Lategan.

At the time of writing, Moraes restored Toyota’s dominance, winning the stage by 7’41” from the Swedish Ford team of Mattias Ekstrom/Emil Bergkvist with Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch taking third in their M-Sport Raptor.

Nasser Al-Attiyah/Edouard Boulanger claimed fourth in their Dacia Sandrider on corrected time with Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz racing their Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux to within 23 seconds of their Qatari rival.

Cristina Gutierrez/Pablo Moreno earned a top six finish in their Dacia, 12 minutes off the lead and 48 seconds ahead of Al Rajhi/Timo Gottschalk in their Overdrive Hilux.

Saood Variawa/Francois Cazalet scored another top 10 finish in their Toyota Gazoo South Africa Hilux, comfortably ahead of the Argentinian Juan Yacopini and his Spanish co-driver Daniel Oliveras in another Overdrive Toyota.

The Brazilian Marcelo Gastaldi and Adrien Metge were the top Century Racing finisher in tenth after Mathieu Serradori/Loic Minaudier- who ran as high as second at the 138km mark – suffered power steering problems and dropped back after stopping to top up with oil.

Ignoring the incorrect instruction at the halfway mark of the stage, the top ten teams had all started the day 16^th or lower, while yesterday’s winner Grégoire de Mevius ended 14^th after setting out first on the road. In the stage results, seven of the top ten started 11^th or lower down the order.

Opening a stage on the Dakar Rally is not for the feint-hearted!

In the bike race, Australian Daniel Sanders maintained his grip on the overall standings with another stage win. The Australian master of the Dakar took his fifth stage win of the season and built up a comfortable lead for the rest of the race, 15′33″ ahead of his closest rival, Tosha Schareina: “It was pretty fast, very fast. Technical at the start, we had a lot of rain. But it was only at the start, so it was a pretty wet line to see in front and just had us kind of correct and not follow the mistakes with the navigation. The speed was good, head was good, so it was a much better day.”

In other news, Moraes was given a suspended disqualification after his co-driver accepted a cell phone from a random stranger for 43 seconds in the neutralization zone on stage five. The DQ Sword of Damocles was replaced with a one-hour penalty.

Autosport reports that Al-Attiyah is incensed by the FIA disqualifying Sainz and Loeb, and more so about his ten-minutes penalty for losing a spare wheel after the supporting cradle broke. Stating his intention to write a letter to the president of FIA Mohammed ben Sulayem about the sanction, he said: “I don’t understand it. To lose the tyres with the support [structure] and then the spectator finds the tyre with the support and you get ten minutes. I don’t accept it. “But I’m working to fix that whole problem because that’s not sport, we have to be fair. If I do it the wrong way and drop the tyres, OK, I get ten minutes penalty, but we didn’t realise, we have to be fair, but I will make a good letter to the [FIA] president, to avoid all that.”

Overall standings (provisional)

The post Moraes magic on Dakar stage 7 (provisional) appeared first on Motorsport Week.

Lucas Moraes ground to a halt after 360 km of the special and has been stopped for around 25 minutes. This setback could allow Sébastien Loeb to regain second place in the general rankings.

The post Lucas Moraes stopped… appeared first on Motorsport Week.

First on the road or not, Sebástian Loeb and Fabian Lurquin took a dominant stage win in their Prodrive Hunter as the Dakar Rally entered its second week.

Faced with 438km of racing from Riyadh to Al-Duwadimi and opening the road, Loeb initially dropped as low as 16^th before scrambling back up the order, chasing down the pair of Toyota Gazoo Racing Hiluxes at the head of the time sheets, headed by Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz and Lucas Moraes/Armand Monleon, a duel that after 173km, was separated by two seconds.

Matias Ekström, second overall in his Audi RS Q e-tron, ground to a halt 47km into the stage and had to wait for the chase truck to help repair the broken rear suspension. Another early casualty was the M-Sport Ford Ranger of Nani Roma, out with mechanical problems.

Mathieu Serradori/ Loic Minaudier made a welcome appearance in the top three in their Century Racing CR6-T, who were chased hard by Guerlain Chicherit/Alex Winocq in fourth.

Moraes took the lead from Quintero by km 213, while Loeb was threateningly close behind in third, just 18 seconds behind the TGR Hilux. By km 251, Moraes was still in the lead but Loeb had taken second from Quintero and looming large in the TGR driver’s mirrors was Nasser Al-Attiyah. The Qatari was out of the running, but aiming to grab as many W2RC points as he could.

By km 311, Loeb was being challenged by Serradori, 34 seconds adrift, followed by the two TGR crews and Chicherit. Sainz was a steady sixth, having only conceded 3:39 of his substantial lead – he could afford to give that amount of time away with a 30 minute lead…

As the cars neared the end of the stage, Moraes was back in second from Chicherit, Sainz and Serradori.

By stage end, Loeb was 10:31 ahead of Sainz in fourth, with Moraes and Al-Attiyah filling the stage podium.

Chicherit was fifth, followed by Serradori, Zala, Dumas, Quintero and Krotov.

Stage 7 results: (provisional)

Loeb, Moraes (+7:06), Al-Attiyah (+9:47)

Overall: Sainz, Loeb (+19:00), Moraes (+1:00:35)

While Chilean Jose Florimo stormed to his third Dakar 2024 bike win in seven stages, the real focus remains on the fight for the overall lead. Florimo’s Honda teammate Ricky Brabec followed Hero rival, Botswana rider Ross Branch home in fifth on the 483 km race over mixed terrain but Branch closed the deficit down to just one second!

Jose Florimo bounced into the lead at the 134 km waypoint, but Kevin Benavides was leading from Florimo by mid distance. Luciano Benavides sat third in front of an intriguing battle between overall top two, Brabec and Branch, with the lead changing between them by the waypoint.

Florimo has closed the overall gap down to six minutes 48 seconds in third Adrien van Beveren 15 minutes adrift, Kevin Benavides, Price, and Sanders. (Bike report by Motorsport Media)

The post Loeb storms stage7 and cuts Sainz’s lead by 10 minutes appeared first on Motorsport Week.

Stage three is the first part of a mini-marathon from Al Duwadimi to Al Salamiya with 732km of driving. The kicker is that service time, immediately after the finish, is limited to just two hours before the cars head off to a remote parc ferme where the crews will sleep in tents in the desert.

Do you go hard and fast, or pace yourself?

For the stage four winner, Lucas Moraes/Armand Monleon it was a bit of both. From a starting position of ninth, the Brazilian Toyota Gazoo Racing driver kept a watching brief of those ahead, staying within two minutes of the leaders. He briefly took the lead at km 310 before dropping to second – by only four seconds – to a hard-charging Nasser Al-Attiyah/Mathieu Baumel in their Prodrive Hunter.

Moraes kept the car hard on the power staying 22 seconds behind the Qatari, and over the last 33km of the stage, made a late charge, beating not only Al-Attiyah, but also Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist’s Audi by nine seconds, and Yazeed Al Rajhi by one minute, all three ending ahead of Al-Attiyah. It was Moraes first Dakar stage win.

Second in the stage after a magnificent drive was Audi’s Ekström/Bergkvist duo which was enough to elevate the Swedes into third overall.

Al Rajhi started from fifth this morning, quickly working his way up the timesheets and into the lead after 100km, but settled back into a fat rhythm over the remainder of the stage hovering 49 seconds off the lead with 33km to go. His third place finish in the stage gave him the overall lead by 29 seconds from Carlos Sainz.

Al-Attiyah duly brought his Hunter home in fourth – in spite of two broken rear dampers – 28 seconds ahead of an on-form Romain Dumas/Max Delfino in their Rebellion Toyota Hilux.

Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz brought their Audi RS Q e-tron home in sixth after dropping as low as 16^th early in the stage.

Mathieu Serradori/Loic Minaudier brought their factory Century Racing CR6-T home in a brilliant seventh while yesterday’s stage three winner, Stéphane Peterhansel/Edouard Boulanger ended eighth in their Audi as a result of opening the road.

Benediktas Vanagas/ Kuldar Sikk had the best stage of their campaign so far in their Toyota Gazoo Racing Baltics Hilux coming home in ninth and comfortably ahead of the X-Raid Arijus Mini JCW of Vaidotas Zala/Paola Fiuza.

Sebastian Loeb started second in his BRX Prodrive Hunter but plummeted down the order to 22^nd.

Stage one winner Gregoire De Meuvis, was in the lead for around 150km but ground to a halt for 15 minutes at km 268, dropping 10 positions half an hour behind the leader.

Toyota Gazoo Racing’s rookie Sa’ood Variawa/Francois Cazalet jumped 20 positions ending 20^th overall, while fellow TGRSA rookie Guy Botterill/Brett Cummings went from 13^th to 30^th after suffering three punctures, and having to stop three times to pump up the tyre.

Giniel de Villiers and Seth Quintero both had punctures within 20km and both again before km 70; Seth had a third puncture but was saved by Moraes who handed over one of his spares, but with no spare tyres left, they reverted to safe mode to complete the stage.

Some interesting insight was shared by Red-Lined Motorsport CEO Terence Marsh. The downloaded data shows the drivers of the three RevoT1+s changed gears an average of 7 times per km for the 463km stage (stage three) which equates to about 3 241 changes for the stage.

Pablo Quintanilla won the bike race to pick up a seventh stage victory on the Dakar and equal his countryman Nacho Cornejo in the Chilean roll of honour for the bike category. He finished the day’s special ahead of Joan Barreda and Kevin Benavides. Ross Branch still sits on top of the general rankings with a lead of 4’11” over Cornejo.

Sebastian Bühler crashed after 360 kilometres of the special. With the retirement of Joachim Rodrigues the day before yesterday, the Indian team is now down to just Branch and Barreda.

Sam Sunderland threw in the towel after stopping for more than 3½ hours at 11 km due to a mechanical problem.

Janus van Kasteren seemed to have another victory in sight with a lead of more than 3 minutes over Aleš Loprais after 201 km, but at the next intermediate point (after 249 km), the gap had dropped to 48’’. Worse still for the Dutchman, after 310 km, van Kasteren has lost the lead and more than 13 minutes.

The post Lucas Moraes becomes fourth different winner in Dakar ’24 – Al Rajhi leads appeared first on Motorsport Week.