Stage 4: Alula – Alula Marathon 452km, liaison 78km
After a drubbing at the hands of Ford on stage three, Toyota struck back on stage four, the first part of the first of two mega-marathon stages.
Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings top-scored for Toyota Gazoo Racing W2RC after taking the lead from Sebastien Loeb at km 89, followed by Nasser Al-Attiyah and Fabien Lurquin in the first of the Dacia Sandriders.
Across the balance of the stage, the multi-South African Rally-Raid Champion steadily built the gap over Al-Attiyah to 7’03”, the biggest winning margin to date and took the overall lead in the process, despite having nine punctures since the start of the event.
Lategan decided to tear up the rule book and just drive instinctively.
“We’ve had a total of nine punctures. It’s unbelievable. I think that’s a record in three days. I was lost. I didn’t know what to do on the rocks, whether to slow down or not, attack or not. Today I decided to forget all that and just go for it. It’s a lottery anyway. We got through the rocks today, we could attack, and we made two small navigation errors, but everyone must have had some.
[7 January] is always a slightly sad day for me because it’s my son’s birthday. He’s turning six. I think there’s no excuse for not being with him on this day over the past few years, so I wish him a happy birthday. We’re going to go and check the car. Every time we get a puncture at the rear, so I think it happens when the front wheels lift the rocks. It’s unpredictable. We played Russian roulette today!”
For the Qatari driver, the result propelled him from tenth to second in the overall standings.
“It wasn’t easy for us. We had a puncture and then we saw Henk Lategan pass us, but he was attacking. We did a good job, we’re here, and I think we didn’t lose too much time. It might even be good for our start position tomorrow. We didn’t need to push any harder; we’re still some way back. The car is in good condition and we’re happy,” said Al-Attiyah.
In the overall standings, Lategan’ s lead over Al-Attiyah is 3’55” with Mattias Ekstrom, who ended the day’s stage in 12th position, holding third some 13 minutes off the pace. In Dakar terms, that’s a slender deficit!
It was a red-letter day for the Polish Goczal family, with Marek taking his maiden Dakar podium with co-driver Maciej Morton in their Energylandia-run Toyota Hilux. His 21-year-old son Eryk and co-driver Szymon Gospodarczyk ended fourth overall, just over three minutes behind his dad and 18 seconds ahead of none other than Sebastien Loeb, who brought his Dacia home in fifth on the day.
Brother (and uncle) Michal Goczal and co-driver Diego Ortega came home in sixth position in a strong showing for the Polish Toyota squad.
Toby Price and Armand Monleon brought their TGR W2RC Hilux home in seventh having started from 32nd in the morning. Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer recorded their best result to date with eighth in their factory Century Racing CR7 while Century Racing’s other factory car of Mathieu Serradori and Loic Minaudier came home in tenth.
The two Century machines sandwiched Saood Variawa and Francois Cazalet in their TGR SA Hilux.
Tosha Schareina claimed back-to-back victories in RallyGP; the Spaniard did it with a barnstorming performance that saw him alone at the front for half of the 417 km stage (The bikes ran a shorter, different route to the cars).
Schareina seized the overall lead although Ricky Brabec is inside the same second. The two Monster Energy Honda HRC leaders are in a dead heat after five days of racing. The Spaniard holds the lead by virtue of his better performance in today’s stage.
Skyler Howes, just 10 seconds back, made it a 1-2-3 for Honda.
Meanwhile, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing are biding their time. Daniel Sanders, fifth at 2′37″, and Edgar Canet, eighth at 3′49″, remain in contention for overall victory, especially the man from Down Under, who is just 1′24″ behind Schareina and Brabec and will have a more favourable start position tomorrow.
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