After a promising performance in Monday’s second leg with the third-fastest time, Sainz came to the fore in the shortened 255km Stage 3 near Al Qaisumah, beating Toyota’s Henk Lategan to the top spot by just over half a minute.
The three-time Dakar champion trailed Lategan for the majority of the stage, but never allowed the South African to pull up an advantage up front.
Having closed the gap to just 14 seconds at the seventh waypoint, the Spaniard moved in front at the next checkpoint before crossing the finish line with 38 seconds in hand.
The result marked the 40th stage win for Sainz as well as the first for an electric prototype in the top cars division, with Audi running three MGUs on its RS Q e-tron using technology it developed in Formula E.
Sainz’s result was backed up by his teammates Stephane Peterhansel and Mattias Ekstrom, who finished third and fifth respectively and less than three minutes off the outright pace in the other two factory Audis.
Peterhansel…
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