Wednesday saw the Dakar Rally take on a short timed section with Kevin Benavides, Rokas Baciuška and Sébastien Loeb pushing hard ahead of the crucial two-part Marathon Stage.
The race has reached the business end in the Empty Quarter with 2021 Dakar winner Benavides hitting the front of the bike race by 1m 29s.
“I attacked before crashing and losing a few minutes there, then I went back on the offensive,” Benavides said.
Among the pack aiming to chase him down on the Marathon Stage is KTM team-mate and two-time winner Toby Price, who lies third 2m 10s behind.
“Hopefully a few people will get in the mix of it,” Price said. “We’ll try and get some gaps and see if it works.”
There was no change in T4 where Baciuška and co-driver Oriol Vidal of the Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team hold a 3m 40s lead over 18-year-old Eryk Goczal, while T3 category leaders Guillaume De Mevius/François Cazalet had their advantage over A.J. Jones/Gustavo Gugelmin cut to 7m 48s with Jones’ fellow Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team USA presented by BFGoodrich crew of Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz triumphant on the day.
Frenchman Loeb claimed the 20th stage win of his Dakar career in the car category with Swede Mattias Ekström second.
“No mistakes, no problems,” Loeb said. “Only dunes for more than 100 kilometers. It was quite long, quite demanding, but the feeling was good with the car.”
Competitors across all categories will now be separated from their mechanics from the beginning of Thursday’s Stage 11 until the conclusion of Friday’s Stage 12 with over 450km of desert racing to tackle head on.