AL-ATTIYAH EXTENDS DAKAR LEAD

Toyota’s Nasser Al-Attiyah has extended his overall lead in the 2022 edition of the Dakar.

The Qatari driver was only tenth fastest on the stage, but that was exactly what was required from Stage 6 complete the opening week of Dakar with a 46 minute lead over the rest of the field.

“Absolutely, we are quite happy today. We tried to push from the beginning, but some drivers made some mistakes.” said Al-Attiyah.

“Mathieu navigated well and we drove all the stage without any problems. We are quite happy to have finished the first week of the Dakar with a good lead. I saw that some drivers had gone too far right, but that was not our problem.”

“Mathieu did a good job, he was really careful to avoid making any mistakes. I think we are in a good way.”

“We are quite happy. We’ve worked a lot this week, without any mistakes. The car is working very well.”

“This is the Dakar and we will try to manage next week without any risks. For victory, it is difficult to say – the Dakar is the Dakar, but we need to be careful and we need to be strong all the way.”

“We need to have a good pace without any relaxing because when you relax you make a mistake. We need to navigate well and we are learning a lot, me and Mathieu.”

“We need to go at high speed, like today when we did a good job and everybody followed us over the last 100 km. We tried to make a good day of it.”

One of those drivers to make a mistake was Al-Attiyah main rival, Sebastien Loeb.

Sebastien Loeb struggled with the navigation – Image: Red Bull

The Prodrive BRX driver had a major navigation error, losing over 20 minutes on the stage while locating a waypoint dropping the Frenchman down to third in the overall standing. 50 minutes behind Al-Attiyah.

“It was a complicated day. We got lost after 100 km, or something like this.” said Loeb.

“We lost quite a lot of time and after that we tried to push to try to close the gap again with the guys in front. I think the rhythm was good, but we lost too much time there, so now the gap, given that we’ve lost fifteen minutes to Nasser again, is fifty-five minutes.”

“It’s quite a lot, nearly one hour, I think. But we’ll see – there’s still a long way to go.”

“So, we’ll continue to push, to try and do some good stages and we’ll see. I have no goal – I will try to do my best and the result will be what it is.”

Loeb’s mistake promoted local Saudi driver Yazeed Al Rajhi into second overall in his Overdrive Toyota entry.

Fastest through todays second loop out of Riyadh was Loeb’s Prodrive teammate Orlando Terranova. The Argentinean drive claiming his seventh career Dakar stage win and first in since 2015, just one minute ahead of the Audi of Mattias Ekstrom.

SSV

Molly Taylor continued make progress – Image: Red Bull

Australian Molly Taylor recored another top ten stage result, finishing Stage 6 in ninth. The Can-Am driver continued her progress up the order in the overall standings after her issue of Stage 4 to now sit in 18th, 5 hours behind Brazilian Rodrigo Luppi who leads the class.

Competitors will have a full day to recover tomorrow before commencing the second week of Dakar 2022.

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