Carlos Sainz sr won special stage of Dakar Rally 2022 for hybrid Audi team
Hi, friends!
There are some changes in the motorsport history and one of them is that some hybrid rally car won the first special stage of not any rally, this time it is the longest and toughest cross-country rally in the world - Dakar Rally 2022.
Seb Loeb hit trouble today as he had double puncture and lost lot of time. But there was more of the trouble for him because he had to drive for the 250km without four wheel drive because he had some technical issues with transmission of his Hunter prototype. He lost 33 minutes in total and now he is behind rally leader Nasser Al-Attiyah more then half an hour which is still nothing when we are talking about Dakar Rally.
There are some things coming at it's place and now we can see that works drivers are on the places where they should be - in the top 10. I don't expect much privateers in the top 10 later in the rally because they just don't have an experience and the budget to run the rally the way works teams can do.
Audi is making a great progress with all three crews in the top 5: Sainz sr fastest, Peterhansel 3rd and Ekstrom 5th. Don't forget that Stephane Peterhansel is out the rally but only contesting special stages after he destroyed his suspension on the first real day of the rally and because of that he had to retire from the rally but still he can drive the special stages, collect the data for the team and take more spare parts in his Audi to help his team mates if some trouble happens.
Nani Roma was the fastest in the Hunter prototype, the same car as Loeb's, finishing special stage in 4th position with 8 minutes behind stage winner Sainz sr.
Leader Al-Attiyah was almost disqualified because his data logger stayed disconnected during the special stage and it's opposite to the regulations. His team of Toyota got penalized with 5000€ and next time this error for Al-Attiyah means disqualification.
Let the best win - as always...
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/episodes/dakar-rally-2022-stage-3
LINK for 19 minutes long VIDEO coverage of today's special stage
Credit for photos and videos to Dakar and Youtube.
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Cheers!