Stage 11: Bisha – Al Henakiya 346km, liaison 536km
Including the Prologue stage, which doesn’t count towards the total race time, Mattias Ekstrom and Emil Bergkvist raced to their third stage win of the Dakar aboard their Ford Raptor in a dominant display, leading from start to finish.
It was the first time that a crew had headed the timing sheets for an entire stage.
There was joy in the Ford camp, for the privateer Raptor of Romain Dumas and co-driver Alex Winocq scored their best ever finish in second place, I’22” off a maiden victory.
Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz made it an all Blue Oval podium, 64 seconds behind the day’s top privateer.
Joao Ferreira/Filipe Palmeiro was the top Toyota in their Gazoo Racing SA Hilux, a timely boost for the Portuguese driver after a torrid marathon stage.
Seth Quintero and Andrew Short brought their TGR W2RC version home in fifth followed by a great stage from Guillaume de Mévius/Mathieu Baumel in their X-Raid Mini JCW.
Guy Botterill and Oriol Mena had a consistent run to seventh in their TGRSA Hilux, while the stage nine winner Eryk Goczal and Szymon Gospodarczyk came home eighth in their older generation Toyota Hilux.
Saood Variawa and Francois Cazalet brought their TGRSA Hilux home in ninth, having run as high as second at the mid-point of the stage, the first time all three Gazoo Racing South Africa cars have finished in the top ten.
The leading, and only, Dacia Sandrider in the top ten was that of Sebastien Loeb/Edouard Boulanger.
The biggest scalp to fall was Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings, who started the day in second position in the overall rankings. They stopped for an hour and forty minutes with mechanical problems at the 140km mark, got going again for ten km before grinding to a halt once more. At the time of writing, they had yet to pass the 156km mark.
Nani Roma/Alex Haro finished 11th but stepped up a notch in the provisional overall rankings to second, with Sebastien Loeb’s tenth place elevating him on to the bottom step of the podium.
Nasser Al-Attiyah/Fabian Lurquin ended a lowly 17th, 12’47 seconds off the winning time but still retain the overall lead with 8’40 in hand over Roma and 18 minutes over Loeb.
In the RallyGP bikes, Skyler Howes finally took his maiden Dakar stage win aboard his Honda, some 21 seconds ahead of his teammate Adrien van Beveren. Edgar Canet finally had a decent run again and top scored for KTM with Luciano Benanvides following closely behind.
The happy American Honda rider said: “It’s really cool to get a stage win on the Dakar, especially on this edition and on a stage like this, which is my style, rocky and high speed. I’m happy with that, happy with the way I rode. Tomorrow, I need to open and it will be a more challenging day for sure. We’ll see how it goes but I’ll do my best and bring this thing home. Now that we’re towards the end of the race, I look back at the mistakes I made earlier in the event, of course the whole in my tyre which took more than 20 minutes out of my time. I don’t want to come here to get fifth place. I’m really proud of it and I’m stoked about my result and riding but of course I want to be on that podium and I want to be fighting for the win”.
Luciano Benavides has moved back into the lead by all of 23 seconds over Honda rider Ricky Brabec. Tosha Schareina remains third, fifteen minutes behind from Daniel Sanders, Howes and van Beveren.
Image credit A.S.O, Red Bull Content Pool, Honda HRC
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