The penalty was announced at 9:15 local time on Tuesday, just before the start of the third stage near Al Qaisumah.
According to an official statement by the stewards, three-time Dakar winner Al-Attiyah arrived at the bivouac on Monday with FIA’s black box – which records all the performance data of each car and is supplied by Magnetti Marelli – disconnected to his Toyota Hilux T1+.
This is in breach of regulation 13.1.2 of the FIA World Rally Raid Sporting Regulations, which states that this data collection system is mandatory for “all T1 vehicles with a turbo petrol engine (…) and for all T1 vehicles with a turbo diesel engine whose drivers are FIA priority drivers”.
Toyota alerted the FIA technical delegate after realising the black box was not connected to the car.
The technical delegate passed on the matters to the stewards who, after listening to the team’s representative Jean-Marc Fortin, decided to impose a penalty of €5,000 to be paid within 48 hours.
In addition,…
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