This is the nightmare that Sainz experienced: he stopped 7 times, they removed the mirror and the door opened.

Carlos Sainz lived a real nightmare in stage 2 of the Dakar 2025, a day of endurance, which became an even greater challenge when he overturned at kilometer 327 of the 48-hour time trial, which lasts two days and has no mechanical assistance in end of the day . Carlos he lost a total of 59 minutes when he arrived at the camp at kilometer 626 (penultimate bivouac of the 6 distributed on the route) and was 45 minutes away from the virtual general classification until this Monday the pilots completed more than 300 kilometers of what was needed them to finish stage 2.

As MD learned in the bivouac of Bisha, Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz They experienced daytime torture, where they had to stop up to 7 times after the reversal, due to damage such as glass. Although luckily, after an inspection of Lucas Cruzthe team believes that the car “it’s fine” and there should be no structural damage to continue.

Juggling to get to camp

Before the accident, Carlos Sainz got stuck in a dune where he was lost for almost 10 minutesand then comes the hardest part. The opening of the track hurt him: he saw a cut dune, he took it faster than he needed and fell on his nose, and then on the roof. It kept the wheels up. And since then, it’s been a nightmare.

Joan Navarro, Carlos Sainz’s right hand, revealed to this newspaper the juggling act that ‘El Matador’ and Lucas Cruz had to do to get to the same camp than other favorites to spend the night in the desert. When Joan saw the accident she feared the worst, but when Mitch Guthrie arrived, they were able to put the car on four wheels and drive on, without much trouble and after Carlos cut the rear of the body with his own hand , leaving your vehicle’s mechanics exposed.

The car has no roof, the door Lucas Cruz didn’t close properly, he had to navigate and give instructions to Carlos while holding the door throughout the special with his right hand.. others, Carlos had to stop up to 7 times. One of them, through the glass, to remove it because it was broken and reduced their visibility. other, because of the radiator, one because they couldn’t see anything and had a punctured tire and another because of a navigation error where they were lost for 7 or 8 minutes. Because of this, Carlos and Lucas lost 25 more minutes than they had already lost in the stoppage due to the rollover.

“The accident took about 20 minutes, but in the end 59 were lost and the good thing is that they are repairing the engine. I hope they can do it and bring it home tomorrow,” he argued.

Recovering tomorrow will be complicated, but if the mechanics are good, let’s see if they can bring him home,” Joan added to this newspaper.

“Luckily it’s mechanically fine, which is the most important thing, at the level of the engine, suspension, box, chassis seems to be the same, but that needs to be verified,” he pointed out. If the car has structural damage like the one that forced Laia Sanz to leave, unlike the Catalan, Ford can fix it because the regulations indicate that only the car manufacturer can fix it, which in this case is Ford itself.

They do not believe that the Dakar is lost for Sainz

Joan Navarro continues to trust the Spaniard’s options in this Dakar, with 10 days left and cars as new as Dacias as rivals, apart from the Toyotas, which could also fail due to the durability of the test this. “It’s complicated, because it’s 45 minutes in the general classification, but there’s one marathon left, the Empty Quarter, and the most important thing is reliability. We’re talking about new cars. Toyota could be the best here, but both Dacia and we are new cars and reliability is something that will also work in this Dakar, I thought we would not save it, but we saved it and even if it is difficult, there are options ,” he concluded for this newspaper. the Bisha bivouac on a day when the teams were forbidden to join their pilots in the bivouac where they would sleep in the middle of the route.