Carlos Sainz, after more than 7 hours of repair for the accident he suffered on stage 6, fell into the same trap (a cut dune) while the pilot he was closely following, his teammate Peterhansel, was able to continue his march and arrived from the night at the bivouac for his mechanics to fix his car and rejoin the race on yesterday’s stage, number 7 of the Dakar 2023, with a penalty of more than 28 hours. And yesterday wasn’t going to be a good day either as he decided to stop to help his other Audi teammate, Mattias Ekström, when he was fighting for the stage. The Spaniard has a nice gesture of friendship with the Swede, destroying one of the suspension arms with a blow from a stone.
Carlos and his co-driver Lucas Cruz wanted to win the stage to make up for what happened on Friday. Instead, they lower the sun to stand by Ekström and disassemble his own car to give him the parts to get him going. Sainz remained waiting in the truck in the middle of the desert for Mattias to continue his journey, just as Peterhansel did last year with Carlos himself. This is the Dakar. As a result, he reached the finish line with 3 hours and 11 minutes lost, time that didn’t matter to Sainz. What he wants is to win the stages and yesterday he didn’t cross it off the list.
Aside from what happened in sports, the news continued to focus on Friday’s incident. Carlos spoke about this after reaching the reduced two-hour aid that competitors have on stage 7, a sort of first part of a mini ‘marathon’ stage.
“Yesterday we were lucky that nothing serious happened in an ugly place. I felt a slight pain in my neck and started to slow down.
After neutral I started to slow down a bit and let Stéphane (Peterhansel) pass and tried to follow him. When you try to follow a car closely, you can’t see where you are and I trust it 100%. After six kilometers, I went left, followed it and followed it, and the next thing I remember was two cars flying. When I landed, I broke the suspension, Stéphane lost consciousness, but we were lucky it wasn’t more serious, although Boulanger had an injury,” said Carlos, noting that he was following Stéphane about 6 meters away .
“I was going fast and when we crashed I damaged the left suspension, so we had to wait for the assistance truck to change all the parts. We lost time, but we were able to finish the stage,” added the Madrid rider.
“The team was very good, they managed to fix the car, they ran and we changed everything. (His Audi) was good this morning, and luckily, Mattias (Ekström) was racing on the stage, so we had to stop to fix the left rear suspension and then wait for the truck to continue”, he concluded, explaining what happened this Saturday on stage 7.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
