Peterhansel on his way to an 11th Dakar success

The 13th stage of the 2013 Dakar represented the final difficulty of the event, with the race ending tomorrow in Santiago. Robby Gordon and Guerlain Chicherit were fighting for the stage victory and it was ultimately the Hummer H3 driver who won by only 22 seconds ahead of the Frenchman. Orlando Terranova completes the top three while the Toyota Giniel de Villiers' Hilux is more than eight minutes behind the reference time, just ahead of Leonid Novitskiy. Lucio Alvarez (Toyota), Carlos Sousa (Great Wall) and Ronanc Chabot are all more than ten minutes behind. Stéphane Peterhansel did not try to attack and reached the finish almost 14 minutes behind the American.

It doesn't matter for the Team X-Raid driver who has more than 44 minutes ahead of Giniel de Villiers before entering the last stage of the event. The Frenchman is heading straight for an eleventh victory in the Dakar, the South African only having 128km timed tomorrow to attempt the impossible. Leonid Novitskiy regains his third place on the provisional podium following a curious poor performance from Nani Roma, winner of the day before's stage. The Spaniard is now 11 minutes behind his Russian teammate. Orlando Terranova completes the top five, 12 minutes ahead of Carlos Sousa and Guerlain Chicherit.