Stage 8: Al Duwadimi – Riyadh Stage: 488km liaison 250km
Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings put their disappointment from Sunday, where their overall lead was cut from over 23 minutes to 21 seconds behind them to grab stage eight by the scruff of its neck and lead the way home to a 7’41” gap over their nearest title rivals. The Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa duo has lead the Dakar since stage two and while their overall advantage might be described as slender, it’s still all to play for over the final four stages.
A two-minute speeding penalty (!) cut their advantage to 5’41” in the overall standings. Lategan also became the seventh different winner on this year’s Dakar Rally. The downside to Lategan’s stage win is that he will open the road on Tuesday; however, he will have bike tracks to lead the way which should mitigate some of the pain he is likely to suffer.
Second on the day, having started 29th, was Guy Botterill and Dennis Murphy in another TGR SA Hilux, 1’47” off the lead after suffering a slow puncture over the last 150km. The young South African driver had to stop to-re-inflate the tyre to ensure it stayed on the rim over the large dunes in the final 30km of the stage heading into Riyadh.
The day started with Botterill opening the way at km 54, 12 seconds ahead of Daniel Schroeder and Henry Kohne in their WCT Amarok.
Stage six winner Guillaume de Mevius took the lead after km 78 but was forced to stop for over an hour at km113 to repair an issue on the left-rear corner of his Mini JCW.
From then on, it was Lategan all the way to Riyadh with Botterill close behind – the gap was 9” at the 200km mark – and earned Toyota Gazoo Racing SA their first one-two.
Third across the stage was another South African crew of Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer in their factory Century Racing CR7, at least it was until the final section, when his French teammate Mathieu Serradori/Loic Minaudier pipped them to the last step of the podium by five seconds! It was Century Racing’s best performance to date with their new CR7 machine.
Nani Roma/Alex Haro was the leading M-Sport Ford pair, bringing their Raptor safely home in fifth place, three seconds clear of Yazeed Al Rajhi/Timo Gottschalk in their Overdrive Toyota Hilux.
Martin Prokop/Viktor Chytka (Jipocar Ford Raptor) was involved in a fierce battle with the Brazilians Joao Ferreira/Filipe Palmeiro in their X-Raid Mini JCW diesel with the nod going to the Czech pair by 23”.
Ninth was Rocas Bacuiska and Oriol Mena in their Overdrive Toyota Hilux with Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz rounding out the top ten in their Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux.
Nasser Al-Attiyah and Edouard Boulanger ended 11th, dropping 12 minutes to Lategan in the overall standings and while still holding fourth on the leaderboard, the Qatari is 34’14” away from the lead. The W2RC champion said: “It was a very tough day. Sometimes when we were opening it was very difficult. Yazeed had a good line and when he passed we just followed him, until the dunes when we passed him, but it was really difficult. I am happy to finish this day. We still have four days left and we’ll see. The navigation was very hard”.
Overall standings (Provisional)
| 1 | H. Lategan/B. Cummings | Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux | 42:05:02 |
| 2 | Y. Al Rajhi/T. Gottschalk | Overdrive Toyota Hilux | +5:41 |
| 3 | M. Ekstrom/E. Bergkvist | M-Sport Ford Raptor | +28:55 |
| 4 | N. Al-Attiyah/E. Boulanger | Dacia Sandrider | +34:14 |
| 5 | M. Guthrie/K. Walch | M-Sport Ford Raptor | +55:39 |
| 6 | M. Serradori/L. Minaudier | Century Racing CR7 | +58:24 |
| 7 | J. Yacopini/D. Oliveras | Overdrive Toyota Hilux | +1:32:11 |
| 8 | S. Quintero/D. Zenz | Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux | +1:36:54 |
| 9 | J. Ferreira/F. Palmeiro | X-Raid Mini JCW | +2:05:07 |
| 10 | B. Baragwanath/L. Cremer | Century Racing CR7 | +2:11:47 |
