Without the opposition of Sébastien Loeb, victim in the second stage of three punctures that ruined his options, the Dakar 2023 has begun to take the format of a classic, in its sporting sense of duel of the greatest rivalry: Carlos Sainz against Nasser al Attiyah . The two close enemies are already face to face, first and second overall, separated by 2 minutes, and with the imminent pursuer, Mathieu Serradori, 25 minutes away. In rally-raids, the Qatari and the Spanish are the rivals who hate each other the most, the ones who have the toughest on the Dakar, and outside of it.
In this 2023 edition that has just started, Al Attiyah and Sainz have soon faced each other at the whim of the race: some of the main favorites have dismounted from the fight in a very tough second stage, which Loeb classified as "hell" for infinity of stones on the road. Peterhansel dropped 32 minutes, Ekström, 37, and the nine-time rally champion lost 1h26m due to three punctures that send him to 31st place, 1h21m behind the lead that Sainz barely retains, after saving the day with third place.
“It has been endless: it has been a very hard, long stage, which required a lot of concentration, all the while looking at the stones so as not to break the tires. We had a puncture once and opening the track was very complicated", explained the man from Madrid, who as the winner of the previous day had to open the route and gave up 5 minutes to the Toyotas of De Villiers and the surprising Van Loon, hero of the day by leading the 430 km of special... until Al Attiyah caught him.
The Qatari, conservative in stage 1 (he was 6th, more than 7m behind Sainz), yesterday went into offensive mode. "It was time to attack and have a good stage," said the four-time champion. “There were many stones, navigation was not easy and many pilots would have problems; so, after puncturing at the beginning, we were very careful on the rocky sections and then attacked on the sandy areas.”
With this his 43rd stage victory, Al Attiyah surpasses Sainz by one, and approaches him by 2m12s in the general classification. The rivalry intensifies between the drivers who have fought the most in the recent history of the Dakar: in the last five editions they have tied the Tuaregs (two each) and have capitalized on stage wins, 16 for the Qatari and 12 for the Spanish (to 10 Peterhansel ). An enmity that Sainz summarized as follows:
–With Nasser there have been many years, since 2009 fighting. He is a very nice guy and he has a different philosophy of understanding things: he doesn't care who he is, he hits the one next to him and then he makes his movie. He wouldn't need it because he's a super good pilot. But he puts on his helmet and the pot goes a bit.
