Toyota drivers dominated the second stage of the Dakar Rally with the fastest five placings on Monday but Nasser Al-Attiyah took over at the top of the car standings for the Dacia Sandriders team.<\/p>\n
The Qatari, a five times Dakar winner, was only eighth fastest on the 400km special stage from the port of Yanbu on Saudi Arabia\u2019s Red Sea coast to Al-Ula but ended the day seven seconds clear of Toyota\u2019s Seth Quintero.<\/p>\n
American Quintero won the stage one minute and 42 seconds ahead of last year\u2019s overall runner-up Henk Lategan of South Africa.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia\u2019s 2025 champion Yazeed Al-Rajhi was third for the Japanese manufacturer\u2019s Overdrive customer team after losing\u00a0nearly half an hour on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Australian Toby Price, a double winner on two wheels, was fourth over the rough terrain in another Toyota Hilux T1+ with Portuguese teammate Joao Ferreira fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good day. I am really quite happy to not really go crazy from the beginning, without any punctures,\u201d said Al-Attiyah.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we need to do for the next two or three days and then we can find our rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belgian Guillaume de Mevius, whose opening stage win provided a big boost for co-driver Mathieu Baumel a year on from having a leg amputated, was third overall ahead of Lategan and France\u2019s nine-times world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in a Dacia.<\/p>\n
The top seven were separated by less than three minutes.<\/p>\n
Three different manufacturers have won so far, with Ford fastest on Saturday\u2019s prologue and Mini X-Raid on Sunday.<\/p>\n
In the motorcycle category, Australia\u2019s defending champion Daniel Sanders won the stage and took the lead from Spanish KTM teammate Edgar Canet.<\/p>\n
Overnight leader Canet was first on the road and had a minor fall after 100km that allowed Sanders to catch up and take a 30 second lead.<\/p>\n
American 2024 winner Ricky Brabec remained third on his factory Honda, two minutes and 18 seconds off the pace.<\/p>\n
British rider James Hillier, an Isle of Man TT winner, retired with a fracture just below the elbow after a fall 250km into Sunday\u2019s opening stage.<\/p>\n
Indian rider Harith Noah, a Rally 2 class winner in 2024, also failed to start the stage after injuring his back on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s third stage winds through desert sands for 422km from and back to Al Ula.<\/p>\n
The endurance rally runs for two weeks and over 7,994km, 4,840 of them in 13 timed stages, entirely within Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
The Dakar began in 1978 as a race from Paris across the Sahara to the Senegalese capital but switched to South America in 2009 for security reasons and then Saudi Arabia in 2020.<\/p>\n
It is also the first round of the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22049,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-22048","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The top seven were separated by less than three minutes.","published_date":null,"news_description":"The top seven were separated by less than three minutes.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25478,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22048\/revisions\/25478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}