Dakar 2024 – Sébastien Loeb 3rd in the Prologue: “I preferred to take the attack side”

One day less, only 18 to go! Sebastian Loeb and his co-driver Fabian Lurquin (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) successfully completed the prologue of the Dakar Rally 2024 this Friday, January 5 near Al-UIa (Saudi Arabia).

The nine-time world rally champion (WRC) achieved the third best time on a 27 km course between the thousand-year-old rocks of this region, behind Mattias Ekström (Audi) and Seth Quintero (Toyota).

Here is our Bahrain Raid Xtreme Prodrive Hunter, all ready for the enormity of Dakar 2024.

The 27kms prologue is tomorrow before stage 1 on Saturday that's 405kms towards Al Henakiyah.

We're up for a great fight for one of motorsport's biggest prizes.🔛@prodrive @bahrainedb pic.twitter.com/IXmJZvEnNh

- Bahrain Raid Xtreme (@BRaidXtreme) January 4, 2024

“It wasn’t that simple,” comments the Alsatian. There was navigation. It was well laid out in front of us, apart from one or two points of hesitation, it was good. We didn't really know whether to attack or manage to be behind (so as not to open the track tomorrow. Editor’s note). But, I was afraid of being too far behind. I preferred to take the “attack” side and try to set a good time. We'll see what happens afterwards. I have a good feeling with the car, no problems to report. »

Thanks to this performance, Sébastien Loeb will be able to choose his starting position among the top 10 (before Ekström and Quintero do the same) for the first stage scheduled for Saturday.

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