Nasser Al Attiyah dismisses Carlos Sainz

During the 686 kilometers of connection to leave Chile, the start of the day was already lively. In the middle of the Andes, Stéphane Peterhansel breaks his gearbox. Two hours of waiting and a change of parts later, the BMW driver attacked again to be on time for the start of the special.

First on the track, Carlos Sainz does not last long. The title holder crashes at the 13th kilometer. Nearly ten minutes late, he leaves and then wanders a little further away. On arrival, it yields 9?19?? at Nasser Al Attiyah and is now at 12:37?? of the leader of the general classification. Clearly, the Fiambala region was not successful for the double World Rally Champion who abandoned there at the bottom of a river two years ago.

Well on his way to widening an almost definitive gap, Nasser Al Attiyah also got lost in the last section. He finished fourth in the stage and will still have to watch his teammate and rival until Buenos Aires.

This difficult special allows Giniel de Villiers to shine. The winner of the 2009 Dakar did not make any mistakes while Stéphane Peterhansel (third) got lost slightly at the end of the course.

Also a good performance from Krzysztof Holowczyc (BMW), second of the day.

“We got lost, and we left for about 7 to 8 minutes,” confided Al Attiyah. Then we picked up Stéphane Peterhansel, then Giniel De Villiers. And from that moment on, we decided to keep a leisurely pace. For our purposes, it's a big day. We don't know how much we gain on Carlos, but we are very happy. »

“We just tried to drive clean,” declared Giniel de Villiers. On the last part the navigation was really difficult, and my co-pilot did an exceptional job. Of course it's very nice to win a stage, especially since this one was a special stage in the tradition of the Dakar: above all, you have to stay focused and careful. So we attacked, but not too hard because I know that you can pay very dearly for mistakes, and especially in Fiambala. »