War of tricks between Sainz and Loeb and some controversy clarified: “The idea was to hide behind a dune”

Carlos Sainz and Sébastien Loeb They went hunting in the largest sand desert in the world, the Rub’al Khali, in English called the ‘Empty Quarter’, or what is the same, the ’empty room’. There is little life there because of its extreme year-round conditions. A sand cage where it is very easy to fall into one of its dangers. In it, the best weapon is cunning, used by Carlos Sainz and Sébastien Loeb, who played with their heads to leave all their rivals offside with very well thought out movements, using the allowed in regulations to make their opponents. fall into the trap.

Everyone has stage 6 marked in red on their calendar, a very complicated 48-hour day, on a real and endless sand roller coaster, 600 kilometers of pure sand where it is very easy to lose the Dakar or get a little closer to Dakar. success Loeb and Sainz were the smartest, moving their pawns on the board a day earlier, in stage 5, to prepare a master move to knock their opponents out of the game. That’s where the war of the ‘traps’ began, berating their rivals to make trouble themselves. And they stung.

Loeb thought of hiding behind a dune!

The strategy of Sébastien Loeb and Carlos Sainz is clear. In stage 5 they want to lose time to start from a delayed position in stage 6 to avoid opening the track and follow the tracks of their rivals in the dunes. Thus, they cannot afford to waste so much time navigating, to follow the correct route in case a ‘waypoint’ is at a very complicated point, such as one that is at the top of a dune. And they can focus more on full acceleration and being more aware of not being surprised by the cut sand.

Because of this, Sébastien Loeb made sure that in stage 5 he even thought of stopping behind a dune and hiding his car there so that no one would see him, lose time and thus start his strategy. It should be remembered that in Dakar cars that decide to waste time on the course in some way are not punished, either by slowing down, stopping or even doing what Loeb decided. The French rejected the idea of ​​hiding in the sand and chose something easier. The checkpoint (waypoint) that the participants must go through is skipped. Failure to prove one of these points requires a 15 minute penalty. He admitted that he deliberately gave up those 15 minutes and started from the back until stage 6.

“At first, our first idea was to hide behind a dune and watch our friends! We would have stopped in the middle of the special, yes. Then I thought of this story about losing a waypoint when I was going to the link this morning. I had time to think about it. I said to myself, “Why don’t we lose the reference point? That way everyone will believe we’ve reached the end without revealing anything. I’ve already thought about parking with Nasser (Al-Attiyah) and Yazeed (Al Rajhi) at the finish line, that they would lose by five minutes and I would lose more than them. It wasn’t that total, I even walked a few times to see where they were, without being seen! ” he noted.

That strategy helped him come out strong over the next two days and win stage 6 by going full throttle on his Prodrive Hunter. However, at the final finish line of stage 6 he admitted that the strategy of Carlos Sainz and Audi was better and that he had perhaps exceeded his intentions in the fifth special. Loeb, with that trick, lost about 21 minutes on stage 5. Sainz, for his part, decided to lose less: 9 minutes compared to Al-Attiyah. He did it in a simple way: he stopped before reaching the goal to ensure a controlled loss of minutes. And Nasser and Al-Rajhi, two of his biggest rivals for success, fell into the trap.

Nasser won that stage 5 and had to open the track. Al-Rajhi also finished in front and had to have an accident in stage 6. So it was not surprising that Al-Rajhi had an accident in the first part of the marathon stage. And in the second half of the sixth special, Al-Attiyah suffered a mechanical problem that also left him at the time losing more than 20 minutes to Carlos. He was in trouble, although he was confident he would respond to stage 7. But this setback left him with no options.

The end result couldn’t have been better for Sainz. Al-Rajhi dropped out. Nasser was gone for more than two hours. And his distance from Loeb increased because his strategy was better. The margin between the two was 29 minutes, while before the start of stage 5 it was 19 minutes and 21 seconds. That means, between stages 5 and 6, Loeb lost a total of 10 minutes compared to Carlos who had a different strategy.

A prepared plan

According to ‘Relevo’, present in Saudi Arabia, Carlos Sainz’s plan was made after the stage 4 dispute, in a 4-hour meeting between the Madrid native, his co-pilot Lucas Cruz, his chief engineer Joan Navarro and other team members. According to the aforementioned media, all kinds of possible scenarios are proposed based on what they think all their rivals can do, and a plan for every possible scenario. In any case they didn’t think to win stage 5 like Al-Attiyah did, a tactic that was too risky.

So, they were even wiser after their massive comeback early in stage 6. Lucas Cruz and Carlos Sainz arrived at the camp before Al-Attiyah was found. They could have left that camp and spent the night in the same place as Al-Attiyah. But they decided to lose a few seconds until after the first part of stage 6 was declared and stay in the previous camp. They prefer to travel the next kilometers with less crushed and denser sand in the morning and avoid falling into any traps in the afternoon, with less light, they prefer to go out in the morning more visible.

controversy?

In addition, ‘Relevo’ also explained that Carlos Sainz is very clever when using his satellite phone in the camp where he slept after the first part of episode 6. In theory, the pilots were supposed to be out of communication and not know their classifications. Or at least, that the organization was ‘sold’. However, David Castera, Dakar director, clarified to the aforementioned media that Carlos Sainz took advantage of the FIA ​​regulations in a very clever way. He did not use his phone, which was kept in a sealed box, as required by test regulations. But FIA has allowed the use of satellite phone. He took advantage of it.

“He has a satellite phone and satellite is not banned by the FIA. I thought the FIA ​​would ban it, but they didn’t, so it’s a trick in the whole story. I have to see for next year that the FIA ​​also bans the satellite phones (at the marathon stage, so they don’t have any outside information and don’t know the classifications), but Carlos did nothing wrong, it was not forbidden. “It was a small detail at the level of the whole organization and everything went well”said the race director. Again, the smartest of all with his entire team.

Finally, BRX complained that the organization decided to cut stage 6 short due to fuel problems suffered by many cars. However, the controversy was quickly settled when David Richards’ team admitted that the test director’s decision was correct.