Nasser Al-Attiyah and Edouard Boulanger gave the Dacia Sandrider its second victory in three races after winning the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, round two of the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship.
Lucas Moraes and Armand Monleon headed a Toyota Gazoo Racing two-three with Seth Quintero and Dennis Zenz taking the final step of the podium.
A delighted Al-Attiyah said: “It’s a really good feeling and I’m very happy to win the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. It was a big push from us this week and thanks to The Dacia Sandriders. We were coming here to win the race and lead the championship to make it easier for the next race. We have a really good car, and the team is very strong. We feel sorry for Seb for what happened yesterday, but this is the situation, and I am really happy to win this race for The Dacia Sandriders and all partners and people who are supporting us. The speed was very high from every competitor, we respect everyone, but we did a very good job over the last few days.”
The five-time Desert Challenge winner heads the championship standings with 91 points.
The event ended on a thrilling note as Al-Attiyah ended the penultimate stage on Wednesday with a slender 41 second lead over Moraes’ Hilux with Thursday’s final 167km stage standing between victory and defeat.
The Qatari W2RC Champion won the 11km prologue, but it was Moraes who made the early running in stage one, beating Dacia’s Sebastian Loeb by 1’01″ with Quintero finishing in third position.
Stage two saw Loeb take the stage win and the overall lead followed by Moraes and Al-Attiyah.
It was Al-Attiyah’s turn to take a stage win on SS3 and displace his French teammate at the top of the overall standings with the consistent Moraes in second and Loeb dropping to third on the scoreboard.
Wednesday was Loeb’s 51st birthday, which is one he’d likely want to forget. The former gymnast, who is used to doing things the human body was never designed to do (like cartwheels), cartwheeled out of the rally.
“It all started when we missed a waypoint by less than 10 metres, which it looked like all our competitors had done in view of the lines we saw. We did a 360-degree turn for validation, but we were caught in our dust, missed a mini-dune and rolled off the front. Our Dacia Sandrider will be brought back to the bivouac, but we’ll have to wait for the FIA inspection to see if we can start again tomorrow”, Loeb reported.
The FIA deemed the roll cage to be too badly damaged and the birthday boy was forced to retire.
20-year-old Polish racer Eryk Goczal and Oriol Mena won the stage in their Prodrive Toyota Hilux, becoming the fourth different winner in five stages.
Al-Attiyah duly took the fastest time on the final stage on Thursday, winning the event by 2’28” from Moraes.
Behind Quintero, Juan Yacopini/Daniel Oliveras brought their Overdrive Toyota Hilux home in fourth overall, followed by Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch in their M-Sport Ford Ranger.
Guy Botterill/Dennis Murphy rounded out the top six in their Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa Hilux.
Dakar winners Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk retired at km13 in the final stage with an engine issue while Goczal’s Overdrive machine caught fire 25km further into the stage.
Mattias Ekstrom fell ill during stage two and had to withdraw from the event.
In the overall championship standings, Al-Attiyah leads from Al Rajhi, Moraes, Quintero and Henk Lategan.
The third round of the W2RC Championship is the Toyota Gazoo Racing South African Safari Rally from 18 – 24 May.
