Dakar 2023, Stage 11: Loeb, four in a row!

Four in a row for Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) on the Dakar Rally 2023! The Franco-Belgian tandem signed its fourth consecutive stage victory this Thursday, January 12, Shaybah (Saudi Arabia) and the heart of the Empty Quarter, scene of the first half of the marathon stage.

The vice-world champions of rally-raid (W2RC) are already on their fifth special success on this Dakar 2023. Such statistics are unprecedented for the Alsatian on this rally-raid. In fact, we have to go back to the 2009 edition, the first contested in South America, to find a driver author of a series of four scratch times on the Dakar, in the person of Carlos Sainz on Volkswagen.

This first stage in the Quart-Vide desert did not cause any major selection. Prodrive signs a double thanks to the second time of Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq (GCK), while the top 10 is held within 10 minutes.

Only Audi RS Q e-tron hybrid still in the running, that of Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist achieved the third best time, ahead of Lucas Moraes and Timo Gottschalk (Toyota), who preserve their second place in the general classification. The Brazilian rookie, however, only has a nine-minute margin over Sébastien Loeb with three stages remaining.

Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel (Toyota) remain comfortably leaders of the 2023 Dakar with a significant margin of 1h21′ over Moraes.

In the T3 category, a disaster struck for Guillaume de Mévius and François Cazalet (G Rally Team). Leaders in the class for a week with more human resources than the competition, the Belgian driver and his French co-driver have slipped in the rankings due to a mechanical problem which held them back for more than an hour. The lead in T3 is now occupied by Austin Jones (Can-Am).

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Dakar 2023 ranking – Stage 11:

General classification :