Rally-Raid

Dakar 2023 – Ekström wins the Prologue and becomes the first leader of the race

Mattias Ekström was ahead of Sébastien Loeb by just one second in this Prologue which presented no difficulty. Nasser Al-Attiyah is 4th.

Published on 31/12/2022 à 10:34

Medhi Casaurang

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Dakar 2023 – Ekström wins the Prologue and becomes the first leader of the race

Mattias Ekström was the fastest in the Prologue. © DPPI / Frédéric Le Floc'h

He was not one of the favorites for this Prologue of the Dakar Rally 2023, contested this Saturday, December 31 over barely 13 km along the Red Sea, and he did not like it. Mattias Ekström (Audi) even responded teasingly to a British colleague on Twitter, when he exposed his favorites for victory: “And why not a surprise from a top-level rookie? » he wrote as he went to bed Friday night.

The former champion of DTM and World Rallycross was the most spectacular during the Prologue organized on a flat stretch of sand. The special looking more like WRC than to rally-raid, no notion of navigation was required to win except a classic rally-type system of notes, stated by his co-pilot Emil Bergkvist.

This is the second Dakar victory for Mattias Ekström, ranked ninth in the event in 2022 for the debut of the Audi RS Q e-tron. The Swede thus shows all the performance of the hybrid 4×4, equipped with several electric motors from the Formula E and a DTM turbo gasoline engine serving as an energy generator.

ALSO READ > Dakar 2023 Guide – Audi as favorite

Vice-world rally raid champion (W2RC) and second in the 2022 Dakar, Sébastien Loeb (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) fought hard to finish with the second best time, just one second behind his opponent. The gaps are more significant behind, even if this special will not have a big impact on the final classification on January 15.

Indeed, Stéphane Peterhansel and Édouard Boulanger (Audi, 3rd) are 11 seconds behind. The title holders, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel (Toyota, 4th) dropped 12'', one less than the winners of the Rallye du Maroc, Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq (GCK, 5th). Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz (Audi, 6th) are relegated to 14'' of their teammates.

In this launch of the competition, the top 10 has the opportunity to choose their starting location for the first stage around Sea Camp scheduled for the New Year. Thus, Hank Lategan (Toyota, 10th at 21'') will be the first to be called to the briefing stage at 20 p.m. (local time) to choose his position for the next day, followed by Orlando Terranova (BRX, 9th at 20''), and so on until Mattias Ekström makes his choice.

Among the losers of the day, we note the poor performances of Vaidotas Zala and Paulo Fiuza, who have had a poor start to their cooperation with Prodrive (+5'43'') and Erik Van Loon and Sébastien Delaunay (Toyota, +6'47'' '), made a mistake and fell on the side of their Hilux T1+:

Dakar 2023 ranking – Prologue and general ranking:

Medhi Casaurang

Passionate about the history of motorsport across all disciplines, I learned to read thanks to AUTOhebdo. At least that's what my parents tell everyone when they see my name inside!

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