Al-Attiyah extends Dakar lead as Loeb takes stage

QATAR’S Nasser a l-Att iya h closed i n on a t hi rd Dakar Ra l ly t it le on Su nday despite n i ne-t i me world ra lly champion Sebastien Loeb ta king the race’s sixth stage honours on the same stretch of sand where his 2018 challenge perished.

A l-Attiya h, t he Dakar champion in 2011 and 2015, has an overa ll lead of 37min 43sec after ta k ing his factor y Toyota to second place on Sunday’s run from Arequipa to San Juan de Marcona.

“We did a great job a ll day long, but we made a blunder in the final 15 kilometres,” said al-Attiya h as he ref lected on a nav igat iona l er ror when he missed a waypoint.

“We went down the wrong valley, a nd t hen it took us a long t ime to backtrack and get back on the right track. It cost us severa l minutes, but I’m still happy wit h our position.”

Loeb, behind t he wheel of a priv ate ent r y Peugeot, cla i med h i s t hird stage win of t his year’s Dakar and 13th of his career after reaching the finish more than two minutes ahead of t he 48-year-old Qatari.

French driver Loeb a lso snatched second place in t he overa ll standi n g s f r om 13 -t i me c h a mpion Stephane Peterhansel who finished a lmost 12 minutes behind a l-Attiyah and the best part of 19 minutes back from Loeb.

“It went well, but we made mistakes. We saw Nasser make the same blunder, so we both lost t wo minutes,” said Loeb, who was relieved to sur v ive the same run from Arequipa to San Juan de Marcona where he was forced to retire last year.

“We didn’t get stuck, we saw the hole where it happened last year, but we dodged the bullet.”

In t he race for t he motorcycling tit le, Chile’s Pablo Quintanilla on a Husqvarna claimed t he stage and took t he overa ll lead.

Quintanilla f inished 1min 52sec ahead of Kevin Benavides of Argentina on a Honda and 4min 21sec in front of Austria’s KTM rider Matthias Walkner, the 2018 champion.

Quinta ni l la now leads prev ious overa l l leader Rick y Brabec of t he US by 4min 38sec a nd Aust ra lia’s Toby Price who is 5min 17sec off the pace.

“It was a hard stage. I attacked from the beginning, caught Kevin and overtook him,” said Quintanilla.

The seventh stage on Monday was to take place in and around San Juan de Marcona.