The Dakar Rally started this Saturday in Saudi Arabia with a first stage turned into a controversial and confusing chess game between the main favorites. Everyone was running with their heads focused on the next 48 hours, when they will have to cover more than 1,000 kilometers without external assistance, military food rations and a night in a tent in the middle of nowhere. In the 412 kilometer loop with numerous road crossings and several traps in the route book that the organization prepared to start the race, Carlos Sainz had to change strategy in the middle of the route after suffering a puncture and several technical problems with the tablets. navigation of your prototype. The 62-year-old driver from Madrid, who is seeking his fifth Dakar, this time with Ford, crossed the finish line seventh and was the first among the great candidates for victory in the car category. In a motorsport competition, their result should be positive, but the FIA regulations caused the drivers to seek precisely the opposite: to lose on purpose.
“The puncture made everything a little complicated,” said Sainz as soon as he crossed the finish line. “We would have liked to do a different strategy, but we decided to change it on the fly after the puncture,” explained Lucas Cruz, his co-driver. The seventh starting place for this Sunday’s adventure worries both defenders of the crown. “I would have liked to start, at least 15th, but it is not easy to get the strategy right and we thought we were going to be further behind. The mess with the tablets and then the puncture has thrown us off a bit, but I consider the result to be good,” concluded ‘El Matador’, resigned to what had happened. The car stage was won by Toyota’s American Seth Quintero with a time of 4h35m08s, and Cristina Gutiérrez finished in fifth place, 2m13s behind the winner, a position that could be a handicap in the face of this Sunday’s challenge.
A few meters from the finish line, an image unbecoming of an elite race occurred. The group of candidates for victory stopped short and decided to let the stopwatch run before crossing the finish line. Nasser Al-Attiyah (20th at 11m13s) and Sébastien Loeb (24th at 12m16s) were the best positioned, although they admitted that they did not like doing it too much. “Today is not really fun. We drive more calmly, it is even boring, and there is no real competition. I hope the rule can change, because if you push and win, you should have the opportunity to win the next day,” said the Qatari, winner of five editions of the event. Nani Roma, who finished 18th and lost 9m28s at the finish line after suffering problems with the engine and GPS sensors, also criticized the system that disadvantages the fastest in this type of situation. “In this circus we are the clowns, and if we all have the same idea it is because we are somewhat right. “I don’t understand that the FIA (International Automobile Federation) cannot understand that whoever wins must have some benefit for the victory,” he pointed out harshly.
The motorcycle system in these cases, established by the International Motorcycle Federation (FIM), seems the most appropriate to avoid excesses and traps in the middle of the desert. In the two-wheeled category, the winner in this type of stage, where the starting order the next day is more important than the result, can choose where he wants to start the next day. This means that no one holds anything back, as was seen at the finish line. The Austrian Daniel Sanders, with a time of 4h41m27s, once again boosted his KTM to first place and was followed by the main contenders in the category, without reservation when it came to giving gas in a stage that caused havoc due to the sharp bushes . With the overalls punctured and exhausted, most of the favorites saved the furniture with the top five of the classification in a handkerchief. Tosha Schareina, the great Spanish asset with Honda, finished fifth, 4m42s behind the winner, although both he and his team complained to the Dakar director about a major error in the road book. “Almost at the end, 80 or 90 kilometers from finishing, I marked two tracks when there was only one. A little later there were several people at that point marking the drivers where it was, so it’s quite unfair, we’ll see if they give us our time back,” explained the 29-year-old Valencian.
The worst part of the day went to Laia Sanz, who overturned her Century Racing after hitting a rock with the car while rolling in the middle of the dust 70 kilometers from the finish line and lost all her chances of competing for the race in her category. . At the close of this report, the Catalan driver was still working to repair her vehicle and be able to get back on the road to avoid what would be her first abandonment in 15 editions. As if the intrinsic harshness of the Dakar were not enough, the camp woke up in Bishah with a fairly extensive flu outbreak that affected, among others, Isidre Esteve, who is celebrating his twentieth participation in the rally this year.
