It was one of those stages. After a limited two-hour service after stage three and spending the night in a tent in the middle of the desert, stage four, the 299km from Al Salamiya to Al Hofuf was fast. Very fast.
Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel made their intentions known immediately, rocketing their Prodrive Hunter into an immediate lead, albeit by only five seconds over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz. The short blast to the first waypoint saw the top 16 all within a minute of the defending champion.
Sebastian Loeb and co-driver Fabian Lurquin were fourth, moving into second place over the following 46km stretch, with the overall rally leader Yazeed Al Rajhi/Timo Gottschalk hot on their heels and joined by Carlos Sainz and Stephane Peterhansel in their rapid Audi RS Q e-trons well in the mix.
By km 188, Al Rajhi, pushing his Overdrive Toyota Hilux hard, was 26 seconds behind the Qatari and four up on Loeb. 41 km later, Loeb pegged the gap to 27 seconds to the leader with Al Rajhi dropping to just over a minute behind. At the last waypoint, the gap between the two Prodrive Hunters was 24 seconds.
Al-Attiyah arrived at the stage end in the lead…until Al-Rajhi arrived, having turned his 1:32 arrears into a 14 second lead for provisionally his second stage win.
Cars poured into Al-Hafuf. Where was Loeb? He blasted into sight, having conquered the dunes in the last section, and blitzed the stage by 1:08 over Al Rajhi, leaving Al-Attiyah in third.
“It was a very good day for us, we did a clean stage. We were a bit in the dust for sure because we started far, far away in the stage”, said the nine-time World Rally Champion.
Sainz came home fourth almost five minutes down, leaving Al Rajhi with an increased overall lead of 4:19, still nothing to write home about with eight stages remaining.
Stephane Peterhansel/ came home fifth followed by Mathieu Serradori/ Edouard Boulanger (Century Racing CR6-T) who gained a position today.
Stage one winner Guillaume de Meuvis had a better stage than yesterday, banking fifth in his Overdrive Toyota Hilux, beating stage two winner Peterhansel by 38 seconds but received a two-minute penalty and dropped to seventh in the day’s classification followed by Vaidotas/Paul Fiuza’s X-Raid Mini in eighth.
Simon Vitse/Frederic Lefebvre troubled the timekeepers for the first time with a superb drive to ninth overall in their MD Optimus T1.2, fending off Martin Prokop/Viktor Chytka’s Jipocar Ford Raptor by 13 seconds.
It was a bad day in the office for Toyota Gazoo Racing; their top finisher was Lucas Moraes/Armand Monleon – yesterday’s winner and left to open the road today – in 11th. Guy Botterill/Brett Cummings and Giniel de Villiers/Dennis Murphy finished 16th and 19th respectively, while worse was to come for Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz who stopped at 68km after damaging an oil pipe and had to wait for their service vehicle and lost over 2½ hours.
Top 3 overall (provisional):
Al Rajhi, Sainz (+4:19), Al-Attiyah (+11:03)
Red-Lined Motorsport Insight: The Buggyra team have 70 personnel, of which 60 are support and media. Excluding the entry fee for the competitors and support cars, that staff compliment amounts to fees of +-€490 000!
Nacho Cornejo has literally flown through stage four to Al-Hofuf. The Chilean achieved the best time with a lead sufficient enough to avoid being leapfrogged by Kevin Benavides due to his 3’42’’ in bonuses. It is the Chilean’s second stage win on this year (subject to any penalties that may be handed out, as was the case on the previous two days).
