Dakar Rally: A victory as desired 🎥
TRIUMPH FOR TOYOTA-SPEERSPITZE Nasser Al-Attiyah managed an unusual start-finish victory in the Toyota Hilux at the 44th Dakar Rally. He withstood the pressure from Sébastien Loeb in the second week of the rally.
Impressive scenes from the penultimate and most difficult stage from Toyota Gazoo Racing's point of view.
Since the short starting leg on January 1, Nasser Al-Attiyah in the Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ with V6 turbo engine has been leading the overall classification. The desert fox from Qatar did not primarily impress with his speed, but with his consistency and serenity.
Al-Attiyah was content with the best times on the two-part first stage and on the fourth leg of the day. After that, he focused his race entirely on his fast pursuer Sébastien Loeb in a BRX Hunter Buggy constructed by Prodrive in England.
Error-free in all areas
While Nasser did not make a single gross driving error, his French co-driver Matthieu Baumel navigated him just as flawlessly through all the difficulties in the terrain. The technology of the Hilux developed by Toyota Gazoo Racing in South Africa also functioned almost flawlessly despite all the hardships.
Thus, Nasser Al-Attiyah clinched the first Dakar victory in Saudi Arabia and the fourth after three successes in South America.
Nasser Al-Attiyah: "This victory is very important for me because I come from this region. After two second places I achieved my big goal, but this was only possible because everything in the team worked perfectly. I only ever took as many risks as I needed to in order to reach the respective daily goal without losing too much time. You have to treat the Dakar Rally with respect."
Loeb narrowly misses out on first Dakar win
Record rally world champion Loeb was beaten by a mere 27 minutes in the end. The Alsatian thus equaled his best result of 2017 to date - the first Dakar triumph is his last great career ambition.
Following the podium ceremony, Loeb immediately headed to Europe to prepare for the Rally Monte Carlo, which he will contest next week in a new Puma Hybrid Rally1 with the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team.
Saudi Yazeer Al Rajhi, navigated by British professional Michael Orr, took third place on the podium in last year's Toyota Hilux with a V8 engine. He was a credit to the host country.
Audi shows its potential
With one stage win each for all three drivers in the second rally week, Team Audi Sport underlined the potential of the RS Q e-tron. On the almost 400-kilometer SS8 of January 10, Ekström, Peterhansel and Sainz even took 1st, 2nd and 4th place.
Without the enormous time loss due to navigation problems on the second day of the rally, Mattias Ekström as the best of the Audi trio could have finished third instead of ninth overall.
Challenging route
The Dakar Rally covered a total of 4120.9 kilometers. In addition to dunes of every variety and fast sand tracks, the program also included trial-like scree sections, winding gravel paths through canyons, fesh-fesh and camel grass.
Many valleys and canyons, numerous parallel and intersecting paths presented the co-drivers with tricky tasks - frequent wayfinding was aided by inaccurate roadbooks.
The complete ranking list and all results of the individual stages and categories are available on the official homepage.
