Sainz struggles in “very tough to guess” and “pure” opening stage of Dakar

Carlos Sainz Sr admitted that he struggled to know Saturday’s opening stage of the Dakar Rally, saying it was “very tough to guess” and extra akin to the occasion’s authentic roots.

Main Ford’s assault within the 431km check round Bisha in Saudi Arabia, reigning champion Sainz suffered an early setback when he misplaced time with a puncture on his new Raptor T1+.

The issues had been sophisticated by the truth that Saturday’s check preceded the all-important 48-hour marathon stage, so there was no incentive for drivers to complete on the entrance and be the primary to come across the terrain.

Like a number of of his rivals, Sainz too purposely slowed down within the ultimate 80km in the direction of the end line in an effort to lose as many positions as potential and increase his prospects for Sunday.

Finally, he completed seventh however categorized eighth after a 10s penalty for exceeding the velocity restrict, 3m27s behind Toyota driver Seth Quintero who was elevated to first after being awarded further time for serving to stranded Century driver Laia Sainz.

However given the robust nature of the stage, and the truth that a number of of his rivals secured extra beneficial beginning positions for the marathon stage, Sainz conceded that it was a tricky opening day.

“It was a primary stage that was fairly vital, fairly a Dakar stage, pure Dakar, with a little bit of every little thing,” the Spaniard informed reporters together with Motorsport.com.

“You may see that on this space there’s loads of vegetation, and the reality is that the automobiles have arrived very broken, it’s tough to not contact you with something, so I’ve punctured.

“I believed that with that point and the tempo I used to be on I may give myself a ultimate place additional again than I had, however it’s very tough to guess, very tough to get it proper, I will take it without any consideration.”

Dacia’s Nasser Al-Attiyah fully stopped on the highway for nearly 10 minutes in an effort to drop positions, finally ending up twentieth within the timesheets.

This implies the Qatari gained’t have to brush the highway for his rivals within the near-1,000km check overlaying Sunday and Monday, whereas additionally having a visible help within the type of the tracks laid out by different drivers.

Sainz revealed that he may have put collectively a greater technique for the opening section of Dakar, with organisers having shifted the marathon stage from week two to the start of the occasion in 2025.

“I might have preferred to start out, at the least fifteenth, however it’s not straightforward to get the technique proper, and possibly we thought we had been going to be additional behind going to date forward right this moment,” he defined.

#225 Ford M-Sport Ford: Carlos Sainz, Lucas Cruz

Photograph by: Purple Bull Content material Pool

Sainz additionally misplaced a navigational pill through the stage, which meant that he was having to depend on a secondary system to search out his manner by way of the desert.

”It made the stage extra sophisticated, extra worrying, we didn’t have the Sentinel [safety feature to avoid collisions],” the 62-year-old mentioned.

“We had the second pill, however the Sentinel was not linked to that pill after which the puncture additionally threw us off a bit, we didn’t understand how a lot we had misplaced.”