Carlos Sainz begins the campaign to defend his title with a victory in the first stage

The Spanish rider, Carlos Sainz, managed to snatch the victory from him on the first special, “Jeddah – Bisha”, where he was able to reverse his delay to a 25-second lead over his French teammate, Stéphane Petransel, thus overtaking the edition champion. 2020 to the top of the temporary general classification of the car category, eight seconds behind his colleague. In a magnificent performance from the stars of X-Raid in Mini cars. The ranking completed the first stage, the Czech driver Martin Prokop, who was determined to compete with the adults and performed consistently during the first special and finished third with a good start for the Czech, who was only three minutes of the two leaders.

Qatari rider Nasser bin Saleh Al-Attiyah suffered during this stage, after winning the exhibition stage yesterday, and the Qatari is now 12 minutes behind current leader Carlos Sainz.

Saudi pilots Yasser bin Saedan finished in fifth place, Emirati Sheikh Khalid Al Qasimi in sixth place, and today’s biggest losers are Yazid bin Mohammed Al-Rajhi, Jordan’s Orland Newfoundland and Bernhard Tin Brinke, today’s stage within the limits of 15th place. Today he finished with all three competitors on the podium 20 minutes late. Almost from Sainz.

While French driver Sebastian Loeb hoped to make a better start than this with his return to the Dakar Rally, the Alsace driver lost 24 minutes to stage winner Carlos Sainz of Spain and now has a new task to make up for this difference if he wants to compete. for the rally title.

As for Lithuanian rider Vaidotas Zala, he struggled in the final kilometers of the stage but finished almost 45 minutes late for the stage winner, so things turned from a great start to a terrible finish.

On Monday it will witness the second phase of the 2021 Saudi Dakar Rally from “Bisha to Wadi Al-Dawasir”, with a length of 685 km, of which 228 km are the Wasel stage and 457 km a special stage.