Al Atiyah is in the lead, Audi will be out on the first day of the Dakar Rally

Audi’s return to cross-country racing started badly and the expectation of the first pure car victory with electric motors has to wait as all three RS Q e-tron drivers lost too much time on the first day of the race of the rally Dakar 2022 in Saudi Arabia.

When Toyota’s Nasser Al Attiyah marched smoothly to the Specials victory, 12 minutes before Bahrain Raid Xtreme rally legend Sebastian Leb, the problems for Audi began at kilometer 153 of the 333 km long special route of the city of Heil.

Until then, the Dakar policeman Stefan Petrancel followed with the first electric Audi Al Attiyah with a gap of 6 seconds. However, the Frenchman had an accident on a rocky pass and broke the rear axle of the German car when – most likely – he hit a rock hidden in camel grass.

Petrancell lost 6 hours and 20 minutes waiting for the Audi support team to fix the problem and returned to the special. But 40 kilometers further he lost another half an hour with an unknown problem and decided to leave at 207 kilometer to avoid the risk of driving at night.

With the Frenchman’s hopes for the elusive 15th victory of his career at the Dakar already gone, Carlos Sainth lost more than two hours in search of a time control towards the end of the special – and by then had already lost 6 minutes. Since Matthias Extrom lost a lot of time with the third Audi in the end, the three drivers are now staying in the race just to continue developing the car.

Leb took the opportunity with the Prodrive team’s buggy and climbed to second place, hoping to start his attack on Al Attiyah with his first victory in Dakar in the coming days. The two were on the track together for the last leg of the special, and they were the only ones to pass all the time checkpoints at the right time.

On motorcycles, Daniel Saunders from GasGas built up the special 3-minute lead of Pablo Quintanilla from the factory Honda. The Australian and the Chilean were a few seconds apart from the middle of the test, but then Saunders increased his pace and finished the special with a difference of 2:07 minutes to Quintanilla.

The Austrian KATM winner 2018, Matthias Walkner, climbed to third place, but lost more than eight minutes on the track and is now 11 minutes behind Saunders. Adrien van Beveren was the fastest of the works Yamaha, approaching Walkner with 1:40 ”, while the American rookie Mason Klein impressed with the KTM from BAS, who made his 4th year today and spent the night in 5th overall .

Last year’s winner Kevin Benavides of KTM and two-time winner Toby Price lost 36 and 47 minutes respectively on the same bike and saw their hopes of victory drop dramatically. Former MotoGP star N with KTM of Tech 3, 33:29 minutes behind Saunders.

As for the Greek crew of this year’s Dakar, Vangelis Bersis and Fotis Koutsoumpos completed the 141 racing kilometers of the Special without any problems, despite the difficulties of driving in the dunes and those that the day hid in the navigation. As they gradually increase their pace and speed, they ranked 60th out of 142 entries in the Dakar Classic category.

The next two days are followed by two Dakar Special Marathons, which according to the plan would not allow the service of racing vehicles, but the heavy rain – which flooded the camp in Al Artaviya, where the participants will go tomorrow (3/2) – forced the organizers to to allow external help.

The Tomorrow Special will still consist of 338 kilometers of racing, but the following easy route will change (as on Tuesday) so that participants can head for a new campsite.