Dakar 2023, Stage 9: Sébastien Loeb on his momentum, triple Prodrive and Sainz in reverse

The reconquest mission undertaken by Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) on this Dakar 2023 is starting to bear fruit. This Tuesday, January 10, between the Saudi capital Riyadh and Haradh, the vice-world champions of rally-raid (W2RC) attacked again to sign their third scratch time of this 45th edition.

ALSO READ > Back at the foot of the podium, can Sébastien Loeb win the 2023 Dakar?

The English team Prodrive even achieved a hat-trick thanks to the Lithuanian Vaidotas Zala, associated with Paulo Fiuza (2nd) and the French Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq (GCK).

The stage victory of Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin, however, suffered a penalty. In fact, the 4×4 Hunter T1+ had difficulty starting during the connecting course and showed up 13 minutes late at the start timing cell this Tuesday morning. The penalty (10 seconds per minute of delay) is however not great enough to take away this day's success.

As it stands, the nine-time world rally champion (WRC) performed well since he climbed onto the provisional podium, in third place. Ranked second last night, Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings (Toyota) broke their left rear transmission and lost a little less than an hour to repair it. Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Dirk von Zitzewitz (Toyota) played the good Samaritans and provided them with the necessary parts.

In the general classification, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel (Toyota) played it safe by losing around ten minutes on Loeb-Lurquin. The leaders still have a comfortable margin of 1h21' over Argentine debutant Lucas Moraes (Toyota) whose objective is to achieve a top 5 on this 2023 Dakar.

Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin are only 20 minutes behind Lucas Moraes. As for Henk Lategan, he falls from second to fourth position, a handful of minutes behind Sébastien Loeb.

The prize for the beautiful stage is awarded to Romain Dumas and Max Delfino (Toyota). The representatives of Rebellion Racing achieved the sixth best provisional time and consolidate this same position within the top 10.

The courage of Sainz

Barely five kilometers after the start of the ninth stage between Riyadh and Haradh Carlos Sainz and his co-driver Lucas Cruz rolled over in their Audi RS Q e-tron hybrid:

🎥 First footage of @CSainz_oficial and @ LucasCruz74's crash, after only 6km in the special. 🚗# Dakar2023 pic.twitter.com/se7SKV27YD

- DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 10, 2023

The three-time Spanish winner, victorious in the first stage of this 2023 Dakar, quickly complained of chest pain on his right side. Despite the wish to wait for assistance to try to get his 4×4 back into working order, he initially accepted the invitation from the medical helicopter to repatriate him to a hospital in Riyadh in order to have a check-up. up complete.

However, “El Matador” still stings. The 60-year-old from Madrid subsequently changed his mind, and pushed the helicopter to turn back to return to his Audi and try to continue his 2023 Dakar!

His assistance truck arrived at the scene of the accident after more than two hours of waiting and the mechanics are trying to restore the machine to good condition.

In the general classification, Sainz-Cruz were already out of the running for the final victory anyway, due to an accident in the sixth stage and several mechanical problems. They were 100th, 29 hours behind leaders Nasser Al-Attiyah-Mathieu Baumel (Toyota).

ALSO READ > Dakar 2023 – Stéphane Peterhansel: “I have no memory” of the accident

Dakar 2023 ranking – Stage 9:

Provisional general ranking: