Stage 10 Camp Shelter > Bisha
Distance: 368 timed kilometers
Stage position: fifty-second
Overall position: seventh
A difficult day for Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz (Ford Raptor) in the tenth stage of the Dakar Rally, the second part of the marathon stage. The Spanish drivers, like most of the drivers in front of them, had a navigation problem at a waypoint that they were unable to find.
While trying to find it and move on, Carlos and Lucas lost a lot of time until they decided to go ahead skipping this waypoint, which meant a penalty of 15 minutes.
After this stage and with three days to go before the end of the Dakar in Yanbu, the Ford drivers are in seventh place, 39 minutes behind the leader.
Carlos Sainz: “It was a tricky spot; we’ve been circling around it. There were many cars there, but we were not able to catch it and we decided to skip it, because we tried up and down, from front to back and nothing, we were not able to. We knew it was going to be the key stage, because last year, starting eighth, we were already opening up and we finished the rally there. The bad thing yesterday is that the others also got lost and we could not make any tactics to go further back. When it’s a point in the dunes you have to stay on course; we followed the tracks and, when we thought we should have reached the waypoint, it was clear that the one that was opening was not going well and maybe that’s where we didn’t know how to find him”.
Tomorrow’s stage
Bisha > Al Henakiyah
Link > 536 km – Special > 346 km
The difficulty of the day’s stage does not lie in the nature of the terrain, as the tracks included in the program usually allow a sustained pace. However, with the number of junctions, detours and forks, the environment can soon become a labyrinth. Lucidity and concentration will be the best allies of those who hope to reach the Al Henakiyah bivouac unharmed. Especially since the total mileage makes the stage exhausting.