Al Attiyah has only one rival left in Dakar: Nani Roma

Nasser Al-Attiyah He will have to touch on what could be the sixth Touareg at Dakar 2026.. The five-time champion of the world’s toughest race had to defend his second starting position on today’s stage 11 after a huge failure in the second half of the marathon stage (stage 10), with his rivals for the title starting further back.

Above all, I had to take care of the mechanics on the 346km stage, which was rocky and anything could happen. And he did it to continue gaining a comfortable advantage in the Dakar’s general classification. Nani Roma consolidated his position in second place, 8 minutes and 40 seconds behind first place, but there was a problem with Lategan’s absence from this match.

of Stage 11 was won by Matthias Ekström in a Ford Triplet, with Dumas second in 1 minute 22 seconds and Carlos Sainz third in 2 minutes 26 seconds.. After losing time on yesterday’s stage, the Madrid native now sits in third place, 28 minutes and 48 seconds behind the leader in fifth place overall, seven minutes behind fourth place (Ekström) and 10 minutes behind Loeb’s podium position.

All these, After a rather weak special missing navigation that occurred the day before. This is what Ekström and Sainz pointed out.

“It was a very fast stage.He explained.

“It wasn’t a very interesting stage. It was just stone and fast. It was an area with a lot of stones, stones, more stones and challenges.”

Carlos Sainz

Nasser, everything is under control

he “Prince of the Desert” Not only is he one of the best in attack, he is also good at managing the race when he takes the lead. In this case, he got behind the wheel and set off for the penultimate special of this rally. Dacia has a 12 minute advantage over Henk Lategan (Toyota) and Nani Roma (Ford). And he did it perfectly.

Nasser avoided dangerThis was especially the case in the car where Sebastien Loeb and Cristina Gutierrez had steering problems during this Dakar. Qatar didn’t have them, but those who started at the front after Serradri didn’t take too many risks and steered with calculators in hand.

In fact, he saw Sebastien Loeb coming at him from behind and wanted to catch up and close in with some aggressive driving on the rocks. And Nasser knew that today was not the day for hand-to-hand combat.

Considering this, Nasser, far from dueling against the Frenchman, realized that “Seb” was far from the battle and overlooked him. “I focused on getting behind him.”underlined Nasser’s calmness even in this kind of situation and seemed to have everything under control even in the face of the penultimate stage (12th place), which could have made the difference. “It won’t be a problem if I’m three or four minutes late tomorrow.”he said his only rival was Nani Roma as Lategan had problems at the 140km mark.

Nani Roma consolidates his position as runner-up

south african toyota He broke his rear suspension and had to stop to fix it. He thus lost all options to fight for the war. dakar And to take second place Nani Roma.

The Catalan attacked on stage 11 after losing time at a controversial waypoint in the rally’s final battle on stage 10. However, despite this, and even though he was able to find the stone area where the leading cars were most crowded in his 11th starting position, he was only able to improve his time by 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Unsatisfactory result for Nasser, leaving leader Al-Attiyah 8 minutes and 30 seconds behind. It also appears in the back 12th Special Romewith option to scratch more seconds Nani The deciding blow for the title.

It seems only a disaster (or, for Rome, a miracle) can separate them. Nasser Al Attiyah of the Tuareg. Just a mechanical problem. Nani Roma is already fighting alone for second place with Nasser, but with one day left and far away, everything is against Nasser.