Dakar 2021 Stage 9 | Stephane Peterhansel takes his first stage victory

X-Raid Mini JCW team’s Stephane Peterhansel absolutely demolished todays stage at the 2021 Dakar and finished fastest with a time of 04:50:27 hours. Nasser Al-Attiyah of Toyota Gazoo Racing, who lead the stage for the first 63km ran into trouble when his Toyota Hilux suffered two punctures and lost significant amount of time in attempting to mend the tyres. Despite this, he managed P2 finishing 12 minutes behind Peterhansel. Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Giniel De Villiers, winner of Stage 5, finished in P3.

X-Raid Mini JCW team’s Carlos Sainz had a tough day courtesy a punctured tyre 98km into the stage. At the first checkpoint (63km), Sainz was just 10 seconds behind teammate Stephane Peterhansel, but by the time the stage was over, Sainz finished in P12, a staggering 22:30 minutes behind Peterhansel. Sebastian Loeb of team BRX has dropped out of the 2021 Dakar Rally after being unable to resolve the issues in his car (his support truck also ran into issues) and not finishing Stage 9. His team mate Nani Roma, however, had a good run and finished in P11 in today’s stage.

General rankings after Stage 9

Stephane Peterhansel courtesy his absolutely stellar driving today managed to open up the gap between him and his closest rival, Nasser Al-Attiyah by almost three times making the gap a solid 17:50 minutes. Carlos Sainz continues to remain at P3 but also lost a lot of time because of the technical issues he faced today and is 1:02:25 hours behind teammate and overall leader Stephane Peterhansel. Jakub Przygonski of Orlen team/Overdrive and Nani Roma of team BRX continue to hold on to P4 and P5, respectively.

Stage 10 of the 2021 Dakar Rally kicks off tomorrow and will see the competitors traverse from Neom to Al-Ula for a total distance of 583km of which the special stage will be 342km long. The terrain is a mix of hilly areas, sandy tracks and valleys.

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