This was the big one – a mammoth stage – 547km of dune racing – some soaring 250m high – split over two days with no support, no communications and a night in the desert with the barest of necessities, spread out amongst eight different bivouacs scattered across Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter.
Several teams including Sebastian Loeb and the three Audi Sport crews played a strategic game on stage five, deliberately losing time to start further back in order to follow the tracks of the leaders.
After the first 49km, it seemed the delaying tactics were paying off as Carlos Sainz led Stephane Peterhansel by 13 seconds with the overall rally leader Yazeed Al Rajhi just behind. The third Audi RS Q e-tron of Mattias Ekström was fourth with Guillaume de Meuvis in fifth. Loeb, who started 35th was sixth fastest.
Seth Quintero and Giniel de Villiers were four seconds apart in their Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux T1Us with Denis Krotov and Ping Sun making his first appearance in the top 10.
At km 51, rally leader Yazeed Al Rajhi crashed out. Game over. ”After 51 kilometres, everything was ok on a very flat chott and we were at full speed when I hit something. The car did a barrel roll and now it is damaged”.
At the next waypoint, it was an Audi 1-2-3 followed by de Meuvis, Loeb and Ping Sun’s Prodrive Hunter.
Loeb took third off Peterhansel by km 191 while Nasser Al-Attiyah’s brave decision to abandon strategy and take his chances opening the stage – without the motorbike tracks to guide him as they were on a different route – shed 12 minutes and held 10th place.
At the 225km mark, the first crack in Audi’s a relentless assault appeared; Peterhansel stopped with a mechanical problem. “We had a puncture and the hydraulic jack system started playing up. We don’t have a hand jack so we don’t know how we’re going to change the wheel. With the damage to the hydraulic system, I’ve lost the power steering and I don’t know how we’re going to manage to pull through”
With just on 1½ hours of racing left for the day, Carlos Sainz was still the quickest driver and had increased his lead over Mattias Ekström to almost 2:30. Sébastien Loeb remained in third, more than five minutes behind. Lucas Moraes and Seth Quintero showed great pace in their TGR Hiluxes, holding fourth and fifth positions respectively.
Trailing Sainz by almost 17 minutes, Nasser Al Attiyah was no longer opening the way, having been caught and passed by Guerlain Chicherit and Ekström.
As the teams went past bivouac B at km 294, Guerlain Chicherit and Marcos Baumgart, making his first appearance in the top 10, displaced Quintero and de Villiers, as had Al-Attiyah, albeit early 24 minutes behind Sainz.
Al-Attiyah was the only movement on the leaderboard at km 346, passing Marco Baumgart, and by the following bivouac at km 401, he’d taken fifth off Chicherit.
With minutes remaining until the crews had to park of at their nearest bivouac, the top five remained unchanged.
Ekström, Al-Attiyah and Chicherit will have a rather lonely evening at bivouac E, leaving the trio with 112km to race to the end of the stage.
The rest of the field have at least 145km (Bivouac D) of dunes ahead of them tomorrow before being flown to Riyadh for the rest day on Saturday.
Guy Botterill had a superb run from 33rd to 12th, elevating the Dakar rookie into the top 10 overall in his Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux. Nani Roma (M-Sport/NWM Ford Ranger T1U) raced from 34th to 13th and Brian Baragwanath (Century Racing CR7) from 33rd to 15th.
19-year-old Seychelles racing lady Aliyyah Koloc brought her Buggyra Red-Lined Revo T1+ home in an incredible 20th in the Ultimate class.
Stage 6a top 3
Sainz, Ekström (+4:31), Loeb (+5:19)
Virtual overall leaderboard:
Sainz, Ekström (+15:58), Al-Attiyah (+21:41), Loeb (+36:51)
When the clocks stopped, Honda rider Adrien van Beveren was quickest to the furthest of the camps, while second placed teammate Ricky Brabec took command of the overall lead from Botswana Hero rider Ross Branch.
Ricky Brabec had a lead of seven minutes over Ross Branch after 277 km. As it stood, Brabec moved into the lead in the virtual general rankings with a lead of around 4 minutes over Nacho Cornejo and Branch, who slipped into third.
At the second refuelling point, after almost 400 km of the stage, Adrien van Beveren had posted the best time to move in front of Ricky Brabec by 12 minutes. Toby Price was still in third, more than 1’:30 ahead of his countryman Daniel Sanders.
Pablo Quintanilla, yesterday’s winner and the last Rally GP rider to start stage six, ran into mechanical problems after 184 km. but it turned out that he had simply run out of fuel, just a dozen kilometres before the refuel station.
In the challenger class, Eryk Goczal headed Mitch Guthrie by four minutes, and in the truck class Martin Macik (Iveco Powerstar) was 14 minutes up on Mitchel van den Brink’s Iveco.
