{"id":22387,"date":"2026-01-14T07:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T05:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/roma-lead-compatriot-to-surge-on-top-in-dakar-rally-race\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:33:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:33:23","slug":"roma-lead-compatriot-to-surge-on-top-in-dakar-rally-race","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/roma-lead-compatriot-to-surge-on-top-in-dakar-rally-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Roma lead compatriot to surge on top in Dakar Rally race"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
Spaniard Nani Roma led compatriot Carlos Sainz in a Ford to surge to the top of the Dakar Rally car standings on Tuesday after a tough ninth stage in the Saudi Arabian desert for some of the front runners.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n
Five-time winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah\u00a0in a Dacia, slipped to third, but is still only one minute 10 seconds behind Roma, with Toyota’s South African\u00a0Henk\u00a0Lategan\u00a0fourth and with a further five minutes to make up.The\u00a0410 kilometres stage was won by 21-year-old Polish non-factory Toyota driver\u00a0Eryk\u00a0Goczal.<\/p>\n

He finished seven minutes ahead of his uncle Michal, while father\u00a0Marek\u00a0was in\u00a031st\u00a0position.<\/p>\n

Australian Toby Price was third on the stage for Toyota.<\/p>\n

Sainz\u00a0was handed a one-minute 10-second penalty for speeding and finished the stage seventh but ahead of most of his rivals, including Roma in eighth.<\/p>\n

The four-time Dakar winner is now 57 seconds behind Roma, who also won on a motorcycle in 2004.<\/p>\n

Sweden’s\u00a0Mattias\u00a0Ekstrom\u00a0lost a lot of time with a navigation error and dropped to fifth and 11 minutes and 19 seconds off the pace. Dacia’s nine times world rally champion\u00a0Sebastian\u00a0Loeb was sixth.<\/p>\n

Spaniard\u00a0Tosha\u00a0Schareina\u00a0won the stage in the motorcycle category for Honda, with\u00a0KTM’s\u00a0Argentine rider\u00a0Luciano\u00a0Benavides\u00a0losing the way and his overall lead to Australia’s defending champion Daniel Sanders.<\/p>\n

Sanders, also on a KTM, led Honda’s American Ricky\u00a0Brabec\u00a0by six minutes and 24 seconds.<\/p>\n

The race, which ends this Saturday on the Red Sea coast, is the first round of the World Rally-Raid Championship \u00a0season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
–SABC–<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22388,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-22387","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"Dakar Rally car race","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22387","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\/22387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25704,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22387\/revisions\/25704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}