Sainz, Despres still atop Dakar Rally
By DPA, IANSTuesday, January 4, 2011
SAN SALVADOR DE JUJUY - Qatari driver Nasser al-Attiyah and Spanish motorcyclist Marc Coma won the third stage of the Dakar Rally Tuesday in Argentina.
Spain’s Carlos Sainz, winner of last year’s race, retains his overall lead in the car category, with a 3.34-minute lead over Volkswagen team-mate al-Attiyah.
“I’m more or less happy with my day. We’d lost a minute and a half to Nasser by the end of the first section, but in the end we made up most of the time lost by pushing more on the last section, where there was less navigation,” Sainz said, in comments posted on the race website.
The motorcycle titleholder, Frenchman Cyril Despres, who also won the offroad race in 2005 and 2007, is atop the motorcycle division with a 14-second lead over Coma.
Coma, who won the Dakar Rally in 2006 and 2009, defined the stage as “a really authentic Dakar day: the first part with lots of navigation, then more riding on the rest”.
The third stage of the prestigious offroad race took participants from San Miguel de Tucuman to San Salvador de Jujuy in northern Argentina, a distance of 731 km. The day’s 500-km timed special was split into two, with red desert canyons dominating the first part and dirt roads surrounded by green forests in the second part.
The rally began Saturday with a so-called liaison stage starting in Buenos Aires. The race is being staged in Argentina and Chile for the third consecutive year, after security problems drove it out of its original location in Africa.
The Dakar Rally, traversing more than 9,500 km including 5,000 km of specials, is scheduled to end Jan 15 in the Argentine capital, where winners are to be celebrated a day later.
This edition, like its predecessors, will feature key stages in northern Chile’s challenging Atacama Desert.
