Great start to the year for Carlos Sainz. The Madrid rider wins the first stage of the 2023 Dakar, despite a difficult start in which he suffered a puncture. He is the new leader of the general classification.
Spectacular stage victory for Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz on the first ‘real’ day of the Dakar 2023. Not even a puncture could stop the Spanish duo from Audi, who, with a much higher pace in the second half of the stage, overtook Mattias Ekström and Sébastien Loeb to win.
The problems for Sainz began in the first kilometers of the stage, where the man from Madrid suffered a puncture that slowed him down compared to his rivals. The mishap was reflected in the time table, since in the first reference to the stopwatch, the Sainz-Cruz duo was in twentieth position, 2 minutes and 9 seconds behind the leader at that point, his teammate Mattias Ekström.
Once the problem was resolved, Carlos gave it his all. He went up to ninth place in the second ‘waypoint’, repeated his position in third and, in fourth, (km 168) he was already sixth. He passed the last landmark before the end (km 277) fourth and reached the finish line first, after 3h20m41s.
To find out his final position, he had to wait for the rest of the riders who had started later to arrive, including Ekström and Loeb, who were fighting for the victory in the stage and at the last crossing point had been separated by less than a minute.
Everything seemed to indicate that the Swede and the Frenchman would play for the victory, but Sainz’s pace in the final stretch of the stage was devastating and neither of them could beat El Matador, although they were very close. Loeb reached the finish line just 23 seconds behind Sainz, and Ekström, 47.
It was not a good day for the last two rally winners as Nasser Al-Attiyah finished eighth, seven minutes and nine seconds behind Sainz and Peterhansel eleventh, almost nine minutes behind.
Classification Stage 1 Dakar 2022
- Sainz/Cruz (Audi) 3:20.41
- Loeb/Lurquin (BRX) +0:23
- Ekstrom/Bergkvist (Audi) +0:47
- Chicherit/Winocq (Prodrive Hunter) +1:04
- Al-Rajhi/Von Zitzewitz (Toyota) +1:59
Sam Sunderland, current motorcycle champion, leaves
The Dakar Rally does not forgive mistakes, however small, be it the first day of the competition or the last. The man who celebrated victory in the motorcycle category a little less than twelve months ago, Sam Sunderland (GasGas), twice winner of the rally (2017 and 2022), has been out of the race after completing just 52 kilometers of the stage from today.
After suffering a fall that caused severe back pain that prevented him from continuing, the 33-year-old Briton was evacuated by helicopter, “conscious and fully mobile” to Yanbu hospital. This mishap meant the abandonment of what he was considered one of the favorites in the battle for victory.
The victory in today’s Motorcycle stage went to his GasGas partner, Australian Daniel Sanders, who beat Pablo Quintanilla by just seven seconds and Ricky Brabec by ten, both Honda riders. The Spanish Joan Barreda has been fourth and rises to second place in the general classification, one second behind Sanders.
Stage 2 will start again at the Sea Camp, the camp located in Yanbu, and will take the competitors to Al Ula, in a route that will consist of a total of 430 timed kilometers. The organization advances that, mainly, there will be tracks where driving precision will be rewarded, many rocks and an end between dunes.
