The man from Madrid is left without a stage win by speeding at a checkpoint, giving Loeb the first place of the day Barreda, one of the victims of motorcycle navigation
To use a football equation, if the ball doesn’t want to go in… That’s what happens to Carlos Sainz in this Dakar 2023. The man from Madrid is already out of the real competition after the 30-hour penalty he saved on Three Kings Day so that he can now only fight for partial victories. At least, to get rid of the bitter aftertaste and to compete for points in the World Cross-Country Championship in which he participates this year. For this reason, on this eighth day between Al-Duwadimi and Riyadh (the longest leg of this raid and with a different route), he jubilantly arrived at the last checkpoint. Sainz and Cruz had managed to put in a perfect performance and from the first checkpoint they were in control. The hard-surface characteristics of the special benefited the controversial Audi RS Q e-Tron E2, as there were no dunes to compromise those problematic suspensions, and Sainz wanted revenge.
From the first waypoint, the step of taking the time, the man from Madrid set the tone. Behind him, in the time standings, were Sebastien Loeb and a Nasser Al-Attiyah who focused only on making mistakes or breaking the Toyota. For the Qatari, all that remains is to wait for the days to pass and with an hour-long mattress, he can even afford the luxury of a mistake he did not commit at the moment. With Sainz’s victory already celebrated in the large Spanish section of the bivouac in Riyadh, Audi boss Sven Quandt exhaled satisfaction with the Madrid native’s performance and it seemed that this small satisfaction would materialize after what happened in the days before, an official message from the organization arrived: Sainz was penalized with 5 minutes.
The reason for the penalty that sent the ‘Matador’ from first to third position of the day was the skipping of a speed radar at one point in the special: where it had to go at 30 km/h, it went to 40 km/h . You also have to respect the speed limits in the Dakar. Result: that 5 minute penalty and goodbye to the stage victory. Thus ends a complicated first part of the raid for Sainz, who absolutely did not expect it to end this way. «The balance of the first week, complicated. A little disappointed with how things have gone for the whole Audi team, with the problems Stéphane and I had, Mattias’s, etc. All we can do is move forward,” he resigned himself upon arrival in Riyadh.
Nasser Al-Attiyah will rest this Monday along with the rest of the competitors with the comfort of knowing he has an hour, three minutes and 46 seconds on his teammate Henk Lategan, so he won’t be a direct rival for the win, and more than an hour and 20 over another Toyota, in this case of the Overdrive structure, driven by the Brazilian Lucas Moraes who debuts in the Dakar as a big surprise. Al-Attiyah’s first serious pursuer is Sebastien Loeb, winner of Sunday’s stage after Sainz was sanctioned, who is fourth overall and nearly two hours away.
It was clear that the Dakar was going to be exciting in the motorcycle category, but few would have bet on eight different winners in the first eight days of the raid. After the forced break in the seventh, the Dakar returned to two wheels with a victory for Botswana’s Ross Branch, who was one of the least affected by navigation problems. The Hero Motorsport team was the fastest on a day where several drivers had to spin until they found the waypoints of several waypoints, losing a lot of time.
One of them was Joan Barreda, for whom the rest day was great for resting, who came in behind Branch at 12:30 and dropped back to 8th overall. And he can still be thankful that several of the front-runners’ competitors, such as a Mason Klein who wanted to take the lead from Skyler Howes, were penalized for violating a speed limit outside the timed zone, resulting in a two-minute race. penalty in general but not in the stage classification. With this result Howes remains in the lead with a margin of 1:13 over Kevin Benavides and Mason Klein.
This Monday, general day of rest for the Dakarians. It will be the last chance to regain strength before the final days of the onslaught begin, which will last much longer for some than for others.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
