Sebastien Loeb is not really a fan of navigating in the dunes for his favourite playground is the cross country rally track. And at the first taste of the high-speed stages in the Dakar, the man has pulled out all stops to register his first win in Dakar 2018. With this performance the French rally ace has jumped forward by two positions and now is running second overall.
It was a nice day for team Peugeot which managed to clock the top three for the second time in this race with Stephane Peterhansel still leading the charge, six minutes ahead of Loeb. Carlos Sainz stood second in stage 4 while Peterhansel was the second runner up.
Suprisingly, the Mini driver Mikko Hirvonen, who had lunged into the 20s yesterday, was the fourth fastest in this stage, jumping to overall 12th. Nasser Al-Attiyah, had a bummer of a day with his Gazoo Toyota getting stuck in the dunes twice making him lose almost an hour in terms of overall standings. Seems like the 30mm extra ground clearance which wreaked havoc yesterday wasn’t enough to take the Qatari racer over the crests.
With the canyons showing up in stage 4, stage 5 will see the racers move towards Arequipa from San Juan de Marcona in Peru.
