Leb reduced Al Attiyah’s lead on the Dakar Rally, but only by 3 minutes

Day five of the 2022 Dakar Rally included one of the year’s big 421km special races that sent drivers to Riyadh for the night. In it, Hank Lategan from the Toyota Gazoo plant celebrated his first victory in a Dakar Special at the age of 27.

Although he had to drive with the door open for the first few kilometers (center), the South African was able to beat Sebastian Leb from Prodrive by two minutes, as overall winner Nasser Al Attiyah was reduced to 8th place. However, the driver from Qatar, also from Toyota Gazoo, only lost 3 minutes to the French – the difference between the two contenders for this year’s victory did not fall below 35 minutes.

Stephen Petrancell took 159th place with the Audi RSQ e-tron electric, but the French Dakar victory record holder soon had to stop to offer Carlos Sainth a shock absorber for his car – since the Spaniard was the only Audi driver, realistic hopes To get into the top ten for the team after the disastrous first day.

With the broken suspension of his RS Q e-tron, Saint lost more than an hour in the special stage until he carried out the repairs with the help of Petrancell and thus fell back to 22nd place overall, 3:19 hours behind. Al Atiya.

Petrancell, with a total penalty of 46 hours for his myriad problems in this year’s race, is 73rd overall. This means that from the trio of the Ingolstadt company in the highest position of the general – in 16th place – Matthias Ekström is 2:46 hours behind Al Attiya.

The general’s top 4 include Lucio Alvarez and Yazid Al Razi’s Overdrive Toyota duo, 51 and 54 minutes behind the leaders, respectively, who take advantage of the 5-hour penalty imposed on Ziniel de Viger by Toyota Gazoo for taking advantage of it passed yesterday by a crashed motorcycle that the driver tried to pick up – but was able to escape the impending danger.

On the motorcycles, the star of the day was again Danilo Petrucci, who continues his impressive transition from the MotoGP slopes to the dunes of Dakar. The Italian won his first victory in the 5th special stage of his life in Dakar after Toby Price who was fastest of the day received a penalty for exceeding the speed limit on the one-way route after the special stage.

The Australian from KTM, two-time winner of the match, dominated with a difference of 4:14 minutes, but later received a 6-minute penalty that pushed him back to fifth place of the day. So the winner was Petrucci, who was only 2 seconds faster than Ross Brands from the factory Yamaha.

Petrucci with KTM from Tech 3 Team was also the protagonist yesterday, with the third year in the 4th special stage – but with a total penalty of 11:41 hours and the big problem he was confronted with in the 2nd special stage If he does not notify his team because he has lost his cell phone, he has no hope of being discriminated against.

The general’s four masters were separated from one another for a minute and a half today, so that they have not changed much in their positions. Matthias Walkner from KTM was half a minute faster than Sun Sunderland from GasGas and thus reduced the difference between the two in the first places to 2:29. Yamaha’s third overall Adrien van Beveren lost a minute on Sunderland, six minutes behind the Briton.

The loudest downhill run of the day was Huqsvarna’s then excellent Skyler House, which played until his violent fall today, in which he was injured. The American managed to get up and finish the special stage, but his injury was quite severe and he had to retire.

Honda factory owner Joan Barreda Bort also suffered a shoulder injury that also ended qualifying and entered the top ten after leaving House – but whether the Spaniard will be able to continue tomorrow is still uncertain.

In both the motorcycle and classic categories, in which Vangelis Bersis and Fotis Koutsoumbos compete, the organizers limited the duration of the special due to the high occupancy of the emergency planes and ended it in the middle of the day.

The Greek crew started the day 80th after winning seven places in the Classic category the day before – although Bersis and Koutsoubos had to fix a suspension problem in the Special. At the same time, the front passenger managed to find out the average hourly speeds after the problem in the respective component together with the navigation.