Giniel De Villiers along with co-driver Alex Haro Bravo of Toyota Gazoo Racing dominate Stage 5 of the Dakar 2021 and finish in 05:09:25 hours. In a surprising turn of events, Brian Baragwanath and co-driver Taye Perry of Century Racing finished second in the stage while Stephane Peterhansel and co-driver Edouard Boulanger of the X-Raid Mini JCW Team finished third.
De Villiers brought his A game today, and led the stage all through and never seemed troubled by the competition. Peterhansel was trailing De Villiers by over 11 minutes at one point but he pushed hard as the stage went by and recovered time, finishing just 2:25 minutes behind the leader. But that wasn’t enough to get him in to second place, as Baragwanath had a great stage as well. Meanwhile, Nasser Al-Attiyah’s winning streak was broken as he finished the day in fourth place.
Disaster struck for Henk Lategen, Toyota Gazoo Racing driver as his session was cut short today by a crash early on in the stage and he required medical attention. A pity, since the rookie was putting on a stellar show so far. Carlos Sainz had difficulty navigating and got lost yet again today resulting in a P9 finish. Sebastian Loeb, who seemed to be getting a rhythm with the BRX Hunter also had trouble navigating the stage and lost a lot of time today and was unable to finish in the top 10.
General rankings after Stage 5
Today’s stages allowed Peterhansel to stretch his lead on Nasser to over 6 minutes, and Nasser’s three stage wins couldn’t help reduce the deficit. Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz is in third but he is a whole 48 minutes behind his teammate Peterhansel.
Stage 6 of the Dakar 2021 will see participants travel from Al Qaisumah to Ha’il for a total of 618km of which the special will be 448km long. The terrain that lies between Al Qaisumah to Ha’il is completely sandy and riddled with dunes of all different shapes and sizes.
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