Even when riding for a week with a broken collarbone Tosha Schareina pushed Daniel Sanders hard in last year’s Dakar Rally, finishing second, less than nine minutes adrift, as the Australian took the crown.
That potential has been underscored with the 30-year-old Spaniard beating Sanders in the Saudi Arabian desert to win stage three of this year’s race and move into third place overall.
Sanders was also passed on the stage clock by American Ricky Brabec but, after taking bonus time awarded for opening the stage into account, came third to retain the overall lead. Sanders is now one minute, seven seconds ahead of Brabec with Schareina six seconds further adrift.
There is then more than seven minutes to Sanders’ KTM tyro teammate Edgar Canet with the top three establishing a decent cushion, albeit with ten stages and a lot of riding still to go.
First up is Wednesday’s marathon stage starting from Al Ula with an overnight bivouac in the desert.
“Let’s see how it is,” said Sanders of the stage. “Hopefully I’m not right up the front, I wouldn’t mind starting back a bit so I don’t have to open, I’ve opened nearly two complete days – a lot of kilometres opening.
The lead rider receives bonuses as he has to plot the way and Sanders added of Tuesday’s stage: “Really tough navigation, but happy with how I rode today. Hopefully I didn’t lose too much time.
“The strategy [for Wednesday] is full gas, like normal, but we’ll make sure we look after the bike, check out the terrain, try and use experience from past years, see how rocky it is – but today was hard and rocky.”
In the car category Mitch Guthrie won his first major Dakar stage to lead overall for the first time after a stunning second half drive.
Guthrie wasn’t among the fastest cars until the checkpoint 167 km into the 421 km loop outside AlUla but was up front from that point and led without peer after 300 km.
The American won by 2:27 from Czech Martin Prokop. Guy Botterill, who was running ninth with 100 km to go, crashed the party in third place.
The four-hour stage blew up the car rankings.
Of the top six leading drivers at the start of the day, only Nasser Al-Attiyah remained in the top 10. He crawled home after two punctures with 100 km to go and fell from first overall to 10th, nearly 12 minutes behind Guthrie.
The new top five, led by Guthrie, were all in Fords. Prokop, Mattias Ekström, four-time champion Carlos Sainz and one-time champion Nani Roma were within four minutes of Guthrie.
Australian two-time bike champ Toby Price also had a difficult stage finishing 30th, more than half-an-hour behind the leader. He and navigator Armand Monleon, of Spain, are now 16th, 25:23 off the front.
with AP
