BISHA, Saudi Arabia — Mathieu Serradori has more than one trick up his sleeve.
When he claimed his maiden stage win back during the 2020 Dakar Rally, he was a minnow who managed to snatch the prize from the great white sharks from time to time.
He used to race in a two-wheel-drive car for the sake of Romanticism and quote poetry by Jean-Louis Schlesser. All in all, he was far from the top of the food chain. The driver from the French Riviera has since moved up to a whole new level, with a career-best sixth place overall last season after switching to a 4×4 T1 in his CR7.
His performance this year has been a mixed bag, but today he hit the jackpot on the 420 km special to Bisha, defeating Nasser Al Attiyah by over 6 minutes and rocketing up four places in the overall, where he now sits fifth, 33 minutes from the Qatari.
In the fight for the title, the big winner of the marathon stage was Al Attiyah, who stamped his authority on the dunes and moved back into the overall lead while leaving the competition in the dust. 1′10″ separated the provisional top 3 yesterday.
The Dacia driver took that and turned it into a 12-minute gap over his closest rival, Henk Lategan, who ran out of fuel and made a navigation blunder, and 12′50″ over Nani Roma, who stayed on the provisional podium.
The podium is back within reach for the second Dacia Sandrider, with Sébastien Loeb behind the wheel, who moved up to fourth place, 23 minutes behind his brother in arms, after Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekström ran into trouble.
