Spanish Audi driver Carlos Sainz and Spanish co-driver Lucas Cruz compete during Stage 8 of the Dakar 2023. /
Dakar | eighth stage
The man from Madrid is left without a stage victory due to speeding at a checkpoint, giving Loeb the first place of the day · Barreda, among the victims of motorcycle navigation
Using a football simile, if the ball does not want to enter… That is what is happening to Carlos Sainz in this Dakar 2023. The man from Madrid is already out of real competition after the 30-hour penalty he accumulated on Three Kings Day, so that now he can only fight for partial victories. At least, to get rid of the bitter aftertaste and fight for points in the Cross-Country World Championship in which he is attached this year. For this reason, on this eighth day between Al-Duwadimi and Riyadh (which was going to be the longest stage of this raid and with another route), he arrived at the last checkpoint exultant. Sainz and Cruz had managed to put together a perfect performance and from the first checkpoint they had taken the reins of the times. The characteristics of the special, on hard ground, benefited the controversial Audi RS Q e-Tron E2, since there were no dunes that would endanger those problematic suspensions, and Sainz wanted revenge.
From the first ‘waypoint’, the step of taking time, the man from Madrid set the tone. Behind him, in the timed classification, were Sebastien Loeb and a Nasser Al-Attiyah focused only on not making mistakes or breaking the Toyota. For the Qatari, all that remains is to wait for the days to pass and with a mattress of one hour he can even afford the luxury of some mistake that, for the moment, he has not committed. When Sainz’s victory had already been celebrated in the large Spanish sector of the Riyadh bivouac, the head of Audi, Sven Quandt, breathed satisfaction with the performance of the Madrid native and it seemed that this small satisfaction was going to come true after what happened in the days previous, an official communication from the organization arrived: Sainz was penalized with 5 minutes.
The reason for the punishment that sent the ‘Matador’ from first to third position of the day was skipping a speed radar at one point in the special: where he was supposed to go at 30 km/h, he went to 40 km/h. Also in the Dakar you have to respect the speed limits. Result: those 5 minutes of punishment and goodbye to the stage victory. Thus ends a complicated first part of the raid for Sainz, who by no means expected to come to fruition like this. «The balance of the first week, complicated. A bit disappointed with how things have gone for the whole Audi team, with the problems that Stéphane and I had, those of Mattias, etc. The only thing we can do is move forward », he resigned himself to his arrival in Riyadh.
Nasser Al-Attiyah will rest this Monday along with the rest of the competitors with the comfort of knowing that he has one hour, three minutes and 46 seconds over his teammate Henk Lategan, so he will not be a direct rival for victory, and more than an hour and 20 over another Toyota, in this case of the Overdrive structure, driven by the Brazilian Lucas Moraes who is debuting in the Dakar as the big surprise. Al-Attiyah’s first serious pursuer is Sebastien Loeb, winner of this Sunday’s stage after Sainz was sanctioned, who occupies fourth position overall and is almost two hours away.
Escabechina among motorcycle favorites
That the Dakar was going to be exciting in the motorcycle category was clear, but few would have bet on seeing eight different winners in the first eight days of the raid. After the forced break in the seventh, the Dakar returned to two wheels with victory for Botswana Ross Branch, who was one of the least affected by navigation problems. The Hero Motorsport team was the fastest on a day in which several drivers had to spin around until they found the waypoints of various waypoints, which made them lose a lot of time.
One of them was Joan Barreda, for whom the rest day was great to rest, who entered at 12:30 behind Branch and fell to 8th overall. And he can still give thanks that several of the front-runners’ competitors, such as a Mason Klein who was bidding to take the lead from Skyler Howes, was penalized for breaking a speed limit outside the timed zone, resulting in a two-minute penalty. in the general but not in the classification of the stage. With this result, Howes continues to lead with a 1:13 margin over Kevin Benavides and Mason Klein.
This Monday, general rest day for the Dakarians. It will be the last chance to regain strength, before facing the last days of the raid, which for some will be much longer than for others.
