Silk Way Rally – Loeb loses the lead to Despres

With more than an hour to spare before the ninth stage of the Silk Way Rally, Sébastien Loeb had a comfortable margin to begin the second week of racing towards the finish in China. But this Monday, between Urumqi and Hami, the scenario of this 2017 edition clearly did not turn out in favor of the nine-time world rally champion.

At kilometer 82, the driver of the Peugeot 3008 DKR Maxi n°104 “fell into a hole” according to the official communication from the organizers, and was forced to repair his buggy for many minutes following technical problems, before being able to resume his progress at reduced speed.

SS9 #cars
Loeb fell into a hole and has technical problems.

— Silk Way Rally (@silkwayrally) July 17, 2017

At the time of writing these lines, Sébastien Loeb had passed WP2 (154 km) more than 2h30′ late before stopping again at kilometer 172, then leaving after being helped by his assistance. Enough to reduce almost to nothing the hopes of first success in rally-raid of the tandem formed with Daniel Elena.

NEWSFLASH @SebastienLoeb & @DanosElena stopped again at KM172 because of mechanical damage as a result of the previous accident KM82.

— Peugeot Sport (@peugeotsport) July 17, 2017

SS9 FLASH INFO 1/2. @sebastienloeb & @danielelena started racing again after they received some help from assistance truck on the track.

— Peugeot Sport (@peugeotsport) July 17, 2017

A boulevard for Despres?

The ninth stage, however, once again fell into the hands of a Peugeot driver, namely Stephane Peterhansel. The winner of the 2017 Dakar, left behind in the general classification for several days, set the best time in 4h09'22" and is 22" ahead of Binglong Lu (Baicmotor BJ40L). Kun Liu (Geely SMG Buggy) takes third place at 2'03", ahead of Wei Han (Geely SMG Buggy) at 2'52" and Cyril Despres (Peugeot) at 2'58".

The latter takes advantage of Sébastien Loeb's setbacks to take control of the general classification, and open the way to a possible double on the Silk Way Rally after his success in 2016. The Frenchman has a 44′ lead over Wei Han and 51′ on Bryce Menzies (Mini JCW Rally), 14th on SS9 having conceded more than 20′. The top 5 is completed by Christian Lavieille (Baicmotor BJ40L) and the first Kamaz truck of Dmitry Sotnikov.

Silk Way Rally ranking after Stage 9