On today's 10th stage the route leads 608 km from Haradh to Shubaytah over fast passages and numerous dunes. But the 10th of 12 races seems to crystallize more and more the real favorites and possible winners: Brabec on the bikes and Sainz on the cars have their noses far in front.
Yesterday's stage winner Pablo Quintanilla opens the race and faces the low, blinding sun for the first 100km, plus he has to fight the wind and watch out for the treacherous dunes, as you never know what's behind them. Another victim of the Dakar is Abdullah Al Shatti, who injured himself in a crash. He had already had to retire last year due to mechanical problems. The repeated early exit is a hard blow. Towards the end of the race, Pablo Quintanilla, Toby Price and Joan Barreda deliver a hot race and accelerate on the sandy ground, sometimes struggling with orientation and navigation, but in the end Barreda takes the stage win. But the three also realize that it is becoming difficult to prevent American Ricky Brabec from winning the Dakar for the first time.
"Ricky is riding very well at the moment, yes he has positioned himself well in the race and he really "pushes" hard when he needs to, he is doing a good race at the moment, it will be difficult to beat him."
says Toby Price after the race to the leader of the ranking. Brabec, for his part, finishes the race in second place and now has excellent prospects of victory, as the gap to his closest rival, Pablo Quintanilla, is already over 25 minutes. The race is ended early after the neutral zone due to strong winds and numerous crashes at the beginning of the race.
Among the racers in the Car/SSV category, Fernando Alonso shows a little too much courage on the approach to a dune, over which he unexpectedly falls and where he overturns the car twice. As I said, dunes that you can't miss are dangerous because you can't see the slope that follows behind the crest. Nothing happened to the two drivers, but as a result Alonso and his co-driver Coma have to remove the smashed windshield and make a stop in the desert.
"We are here. We lost a lot of time and our rank in the standings, but it doesn't matter if I'm second or tenth, I'm happy to have finished another tough stage."
Fernando Alonso says in an interview after the race.
Even though South African Giniel de Villiers is already a good hour behind the leader Sainz, he is giving it his all to achieve a top result at the 2020 Dakar. On today's stage, the 2009 Dakar winner finishes in third place. Jakub Przygonski, who had already been beaten, takes second place on today's stage with co-driver Timo Gottschalk. But this stage is also dominated by the leading Carlos Sainz on his Mini Buggy and he extends his lead again.
"It was a great stage for me, treacherous, complicated, the sand affected visibility, so I had to stay extremely careful because the race is still long and everything can change completely from one day to the next."
the Spanish veteran talks about his race today in an interview. Carlos Sainz's strongest rival so far, the Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah, got lost in the confusion of the desert today and lost more than 18 minutes to Sainz.
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