Carlos Sainz dreams of Dakar: “Today was very complicated. We went round and round”

Carlos Sainz Before starting the marathon stage, I was warned that important moments were coming. Dakar Rally 2026. And the truth is, things couldn’t have gotten off to a better start for ‘Matador’. He struggled quite a bit to maintain his pace in the first half, but was the best performer among a group of favorites who had all kinds of problems.

Sainz was poised to become the rally’s new leader, but Ford teammate Nani Roma gave him the final push.effectively taking second place, 57 seconds behind the new leader.. This is a huge award considering he started in 5th place overall, 11 minutes behind Al Attiyah who missed out on the day.

“Sailing today was really difficult. It was difficult to find a waypoint, so I ended up going around in circles. And we don’t really know what happened. After that mistake they gave me a penalty speeding violation” he said in a bivouac in the middle of the desert.

Despite the setback in WP and the 1 minute 10 second penalty, Sainz will be more than happy with the time lost compared to the winner. With a final seventh place, he will have several rivals ahead of him.

The only drawback is that all the enemies competing for the “Touareg” Nani Roma, Al Attiyah, Ekström and Lategan start directly behind him and have a certain advantage. But the 63-year-old from Madrid knows what he is up against and will be able to take advantage of the line left by the six drivers starting from the front.