Loeb rolled his Dacia during Tuesday’s third stage of this year’s Dakar Rally. The FIA inspectors were forced to disqualify Loeb from the event as the car’s roll cage was damaged in the crash.
The French ace had only completed just over ten kilometres of the stage before the accident. Even without the disqualification, Loeb’s rally was already on shaky ground. This marks Loeb’s ninth attempt at Dakar; he has rolled his car four times and reached the podium on the other occasions, but victory still eludes him.
“It’s really frustrating to head back to Jeddah instead of being in the car fighting out there. There was still so much to play for. With 1h15m behind the leaders, nothing was lost yet. I’m honestly at a bit of a loss for words. It wasn’t from pushing too hard; we just got caught out by a bad compression simple as that. There wasn’t much we could do in the moment,” Loeb told DirtFish.
Last year’s winner Carlos Sainz is also out of the rally. Sainz damaged his Ford during Sunday and Monday’s nearly 1,000-kilometre marathon stage and was unable to continue on Tuesday.
On Wednesday’s latest stage, five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah faced issues. The Qatari driver had to stop midway through the 415-kilometre stage. Eventually, his Dacia teammate Cristina Gutiérrez brought spare parts to assist, allowing him to continue. However, Al-Attiyah lost over half an hour to the leaders and dropped out of the podium positions.
The surprising Dakar Rally is currently led by Toyota’s Henk Lategan in Saudi Arabia. The South African driver has a lead of just under seven minutes over local favourite Yazeed Al-Rajhi. Ford’s Mattias Ekström is third, trailing by more than 21 minutes.
None of the top six drivers have ever won the legendary Dakar Rally. However, with only four stages completed and eight gruelling stages still to go, the race is far from decided.
Thursday’s stage covers 428 kilometres, and the rally will conclude next Friday.
Dakar Rally standings after stage 4/12:
| POS | Driver | Car | Time |
| 1. | Henk Lategan | Toyota | 23:36:24 |
| 2. | Yazeed Al-Rajhi | Toyota | +6:54 |
| 3. | Mattias Ekström | Ford | +21:40 |
| 4. | Mathieu Serradori | Century | +30:25 |
| 5. | Lucas Moraes | Toyota | +33:25 |
| 6. | Mitchell Guthrie | Ford | +34:09 |
| 7. | Nasser Al-Attiyah | Dacia | +35:53 |
