Sainz rebuilds lead as Ekstrom heads Audi 1-2

Following up on his third stage win at this year’s event, Loeb looked set to carve more time out of Sainz’s overall advantage as he led the Spaniard by three minutes, and nearest rival Ekstrom by one minute, entering the final 100km of the Al Duwadimi to Ha’il stage.

But on the all-dirt track run to the stage finish, Loeb dropped over 10 minutes to his rivals to undo all his strong work and provide Sainz with more breathing space.

Ekstrom picked up the lead which he held to the finish to take his fifth stage victory overall at the Dakar Rally and second this year including his prologue triumph.

Ekstrom’s Audi team-mate Stephane Peterhansel made it a German factory 1-2, taking second place off Guerlain Chicherit over the final 10km and by just 25 seconds at the finish, after a total of 458km of competitive running on Monday.

Sainz completed a relatively low-key run to fourth place in his Audi, but with Loeb only 10th the four-time Dakar Rally winner leads the French driver by 24m47s with four stages to go until Friday’s finish.

Toyota’s Lucas Moraes held on to third overall despite finishing the stage down in seventh and losing a minute to Guillaume de Mevius, with the Overdrive Toyota runner still half an hour behind the podium trio in the general classification.

Fellow Toyota driver Giniel De Villiers remains in fifth place overall ahead of Overdrive’s Chicherit, with Martin Prokop in the Orlen Jipocar Ford Raptor seventh but over two hours off leader Sainz.

Defending Dakar Rally champion Nasser Al-Attiyah’s event was given another blow after he suffered an engine breakdown 62km into the stage.

The Prodrive Hunter was left waiting for team assistance and could resume tomorrow in order to pick up world championship points, but he will be unable to add to his five Dakar Rally career wins.

Al-Attiyah was already effectively out of victory contention when he dropped 2h45m during the 48-hour Stage 6 due to car damage sustained in a hard landing in the Empty Quarter.

Provisional classification after Stage 8 (Top 10 only):