Nasser Al-Attiyah shaved a further 1 minute off of Stephane Peterhansel‘s lead during the fourth stage of the Dakar Rally after going quickest of all for the second consecutive time.
Al-Attiyah started day 3 of the action 6 minutes and 33 seconds behind Peterhansel, but his stage three win helped him close in on the Frenchman; he’s now 5 minutes and 16 seconds behind in second place.
Giniel de Villiers moved up to third place overall following trouble for Lucio Alvarez. The Imperial Toyota driver is now enduring heavy pressure from Leonid Novitskiy who’s just 26 seconds behind.
Carlos Sainz dropped out of the top 10 after organizers reversed their decision to give him back the 20 minutes he lost on Sunday to a satellite problem; he was also forced to stop several times due to electronic issues on his Red Bull Buggy.
Further investigations on Sainz’s Buggy revealed that the main GPS experienced malfunctions and that use of the secondary GPS was possible.
Robby Gordon‘s hopes of a Dakar win are all but over as he rolled his Hummer from 13th place, 32 kilometers into the timed stage. Luckily, the American wasn’t harmed during the incident.
Overall standings after stage four:
Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Stephane Peterhansel X-raid Mini 9h04m29s 2. Nasser Al-Attiyah Red Bull Buggy + 5m16s 3. Giniel de Villiers Imperial Toyota + 33m22s 4. Leonid Novitskiy X-raid Mini + 33m48s 5. Nani Roma X-raid Mini + 39m06s 6. Guerlain Chicherit SMG Buggy + 42m32s 7. Ronan Chabot SMG Buggy + 59m30s 8. Bernard Errandonea SMG Buggy + 1h04m54s 9. Boris Gadasin G-Force Nissan + 1h22m07s 10. Pascal Thomasse MD Buggy + 1h23m56s