Loeb in a barrel: "Really not the birthday present I wanted"

Moments after setting the fastest time at the first Waypoint, Sébastien Loeb found himself, with his co-driver Fabian Lurquin, in a barrel roll and forced to retire. While the Alsatian and the Belgian were unharmed, the Dacia Sandrider n°219 was much less so. The fault was a U-turn, made by a large part of the peloton, which caused Loeb to lose sight of a mini-dune, due to the dust released by his own car.

« It really wasn't the birthday present I wanted. It all started when we missed a waypoint by less than 10 meters, which all of our competitors seemed to have done based on the lines we were seeing. We did a 360-degree turn to validate, but we got caught in the dust, missed a mini-dune and went into a barrel roll with the front."

As in the Dakar, where he was unable to get back behind the wheel after a rollover during the third stage due to a damaged roll bar, the nine-time World Rally Champion is hanging on the lips of the FIA, which will decide whether or not to let him start again on Thursday. The Franco-Belgian duo could, even if they are no longer in the general classification, serve as an aid to Nasser Al-Attiyah and Édouard Boulanger, leaders with less than a minute's lead over the Toyota by Lucas Moraes before the final stage.

« Our Dacia Sandrider will be brought back to the bivouac, but we will have to wait for the FIA ​​inspection to know if we can leave again tomorrow. It's disappointing because the performance of the car and the work of the team has been really impressive. Even today's stage looked good for Fabian and me, with a good pace from the start. Unfortunately, these are things that can happen, but we will come back stronger and we keep our fingers crossed for Nasser and Edward. »

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