Dakar 2023 – Sébastien Loeb: “It wasn’t too complicated” in the Empty Quarter

Sébastien Loeb (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) is not satisfied. Despite a series of three consecutive stage victories the day after the rest day, the Alsatian did it again with a fourth scratch time in a row on this Dakar Rally 2023, this Thursday January 12.

The runner-up in the 2022 Dakar, who is pursuing the same objective between now and the final finish in the Arabian Gulf in Dammam (Saudi Arabia) on Sunday January 15, gives the maximum of his abilities at the wheel of the 4×4 Hunter T1+ assembled by the English team Prodrive.

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Little marked by the effort at the end of this stage traced in the dreaded Empty Quarter desert, Sébastien Loeb thus signed his 21st stage victory on the Dakar, enough to equal the number of special successes of the legend Pierre Lartigue (quadruple winner at Citroën in the 1990s).

“It wasn’t too complicated, it’s okay, he told us. There were a lot of shocks, we were going flat out. I don't know if there were even fewer dunes than yesterday (Wednesday) because in a straight line we took more shocks.

Overall, the dunes were not very difficult to negotiate, except for certain technical passages where you had to think. There were some very slow parts, and it was not easy to maintain momentum. We took a wheel off the wheel, stopped and changed the wheel in the dunes. But overall it went well. »