Attiyah retains overall Dakar Rally lead as Lategan takes stage five

Agencies Riyadh South African Henk Lategan won the fifth stage of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, despite his driver’s door flapping open, as ...

AgenciesRiyadhSouth African Henk Lategan won the fifth stage of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, despite his driver’s door flapping open, as Sebastien Loeb trimmed Nasser Al Attiyah’s overall lead to 35 minutes.Lategan, who has often met with bad luck since his participation on the Dakar last year, picked up his very first success. Lucio Alvarez has climbed on to the third step of the day’s podium, though Mathieu Serradori missed out on the top 3 by just 14 seconds.Frenchman Loeb, a nine times world rally champion, was second fastest over the 611km loop near Riyadh to claw back nearly three minutes from his Qatari rival. Triple Dakar winner Attiyah was eighth fastest in his Toyota and has overall lead of 35 minutes 10 seconds. The 51-year-old Attiyah, a 2012 Olympic shooting medallist, last won the title in 2019 and has finished second in four of the last six years.Having inherited victory on Wednesday’s fourth stage from fellow Toyota Hilux driver Yazeed Al Rajhi, Attiyah had predicted that opening the road would leave him vulnerable to those behind, and so it proved to be. “It was a good day and I am quite happy to finish day five because there were no lines from the bikes, but Mathieu Baumel (co-driver) did a really good job,” he said. “Seb caught us in the last hundred kilometres. We stayed together and played around a bit: sometimes he was in front, sometimes I was in front. I think we did a good job and I’m quite happy to finish the day. There is still a long way to go. We need to be clever and avoid any problems. Also, Seb will keep trying. I hope we can carry on day-by-day without any problems,” the Qatari added.Lategan, who is out of contention for overall victory, hit problems soon after the start. “I was driving until the first control point with the door flapping open. Then I managed to solve that, I strapped myself in and couldn’t open the door,” he said.“Then we had a puncture, so I had to climb out of the navigator’s door and change the puncture. So we’ve had just the craziest day. I can’t actually believe that we have won the stage. It doesn’t make sense.”Attiyah had the disadvantage of leading on the road, without motorcycles ahead to help with navigation by creating lines in the desert, and Loeb was able to pass him through the dunes. “We took a few minutes from him; that was the plan in the morning, so we are happy with that. Big gains were not possible today, for sure,” said the Frenchman, who drives for the Bahrain Raid Xtreme team. “Starting just behind him opening the road meant it was not possible to make a big gap.”The electric hybrid Audis of 14 times Dakar winner Stephane Peterhansel and triple champion Carlos Sainz lost more chunks of time after the former stopped to help the Spaniard fix a broken shock absorber.In the motorcycle category, former MotoGP racer and Dakar debutant Danilo Petrucci took his first stage win after Australian Toby Price was given a six minute penalty for speeding. Italian Petrucci, out of the overall reckoning, had finished second and four minutes behind. He was the first MotoGP rider to win a Dakar stage.Britain’s Sam Sunderland retained the overall lead for the GasGas team, some two and half minutes clear of Austrian KTM rider Matthias Walkner, with the bike riders taking a different route to the cars. The motorcycle stage was stopped shortly after midday for safety reasons due to the demands placed on the medical support aircraft.The 2022 race has been marred by the injuries suffered by French driver Philippe Boutron in a blast being investigated by French prosecutors as a suspected terror attack. Boutron’s son said his father had emerged from a coma following the explosion on December 30, days before the start of the Dakar.