Qatar's Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah drives during yesterday's stage.
Riyadh: Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah stretched his Dakar Rally lead to 48 minutes yesterday with Saudi Arabia’s Yazeed Al Rajhi replacing Sebastien Loeb as the Qatari’s closest rival in the car category.
The seventh stage around the Saudi capital Riyadh, with the event under heightened security after an explosion in Jeddah last week, was won by Loeb’s Bahrain Raid Xtreme team-mate Orlando Terranova of Argentina.
Audi’s Mattias Ekstroem was second and Al Rajhi third for the Overdrive Toyota team.
Factory Toyota driver Al Attiyah finished 10th in the stage and was 48 minutes and 54 seconds clear of Al Rajhi, who was in turn a minute and a half clear of nine times world rally champion Loeb.
“We are quite happy today. We tried to push from the beginning, but some drivers made some mistakes. 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,"the triple champion Al Attiyah said.
“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,” the Qatari added.
"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,” said Al Attiyah.
The motorcycle stage was halted at the 101 km mark due to heavy rain and the deterioration of tracks after the cars and trucks went through on Thursday.
Britain’s Sam Sunderland retained the overall lead after finishing second to his Australian GasGas team mate Daniel Sanders.
Sanders moved up to third place overall, with Austrian Matthias Walkner second and two minutes and 39 seconds behind Sunderland.
Today is a rest day in the gruelling endurance event which finishes in Jeddah on Jan. 14.
Stage 6 Result
1. Orlando Terranova/Dani Oliveras Carreras (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) 3h06m45s
2. Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist (Audi) +1m06s
3. Yazeed Al Rajhi/Michael Orr (Overdrive Toyota) +1m49s
4. Brian Baragwanath/Leonard Cremer (Century) +3m06s
5. Nani Roma/Alex Haro Bravo (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) +3m34s
6. Bernhard ten Brinke/Sébastien Delaunay (Overdrive Toyota) +4m06s
7. Shameer Variawa/Danie Stassen (Toyota) +4m06s
8. Martin Prokop/Viktor Chytka (Benzina Orlen Ford) +5m45s
9. Wei Han/Li Ma (HanWei SMG) + 5m58s
10. Nasser Al Attiyah/Mathieu Baumel (Toyota) +6m16s
Overall standings after SS6
1. Al Attiyah/Baumel (Toyota) 20h37m24s
2. Al Rajhi/Orr (Overdrive Toyota) +50m19s
3. Sebastien Loeb/Fabian Lurquin (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) +50m25s
4. Lucio Alvarez/Armand Monleon (Overdrive Toyota +1h06m58s
5. Kuba Przygónski/Timo Gottschalk (X-raid Mini) +1h16m25s
