Saudi Arabia’s local hero Yazeed Al-Rajhi is in the overall lead for the first time at this year’s Dakar Rally after finishing third in stage nine on Tuesday, taking over from Henk Lategan who suffered two punctures.
Al-Rajhi, of the Toyota Overdrive Racing team, finished just over three minutes behind five-times Dakar winner Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah who won the 357km stage between Riyadh and Haradh, with South Africa’s Lategan down in 11th place. Lategan, who held the overall lead since stage two, had his lead whittled down to 21 seconds after Sunday’s stage, but a win on Monday had pushed his advantage back out to five minutes and 41 seconds. Al-Rajhi finished almost 13 minutes ahead of Lategan and with three stages left, his overall advantage is seven minutes and nine seconds, after Lategan’s difficult day.
“It’s a bit of disaster to be honest. It was really a mess, about 13km in and we got lost. We thought we missed the waypoint but we actually had it,” Lategan said. “It wasn’t great and when we got lost we got one puncture and then towards the end we got another one and the wheel is actually flat.
“So, it was a messy, messy, messy day for us but it’s not the end of the world, we’re still in it. But it’s a bit of a disappointing day.” Guy Botterill, who had pushed hard for a stage win on Monday before finishing second behind fellow South African Lategan, is out of the race after an accident 272km into Tuesday’s stage.