Sheikh Khalid continues to make steady progress after moving up to seventh in Dakar Rally

Sport360 staff 14:01 11/01/2018
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  • For , the fourth stage of the Dakar Rally all-owed him to find a balance between attacking and taking what the gruelling course gives.

    A sixth-place finish on the stage pushed the Abu Dhabi Racing and Peugeot Middle East driver up the standings and into seventh overall.

    The day wasn’t without more obstacles to overcome, including a flat tyre after 70km, but Al Qassimi showed a greater comfort in the conditions and pushed when he found his opportunity.

    “It was very rocky so I decided not to go in complete cruise mode because if we had another flat tyre then we would have more problems because we did not have another spare tyre,” Al Qassimi said.

    “So we adopted a different strategy and came to a section where there was plenty of sand and dunes and blind corners, so I was worried about the bikers because the previous day I hit a bike.

    “But anyway, we had a balanced pace and there were some difficult canyons that we had to drive through. I had to find a way to ent-er the canyons and then exit them which was a lot of effort.

    “We came up across Cyril Despres who had stopped due to a broken rear suspension so I asked if I could do anything but he was ok waiting for team support.

    “We lost a few minutes, but then that is part of the game. We also missed a couple of points and had to come back which cost us some minutes.

    “We will try and maintain our balance and see how it goes from here.”

    Late Wednesday night, Sebastien Loeb was forced to pull out of the Dakar rally after a back injury suffered by his co-driver in a disastrous fifth stage won by defending champion Stephane Peterhansel.

    As Peterhansel took another important step towards his 14th Dakar title, Loeb’s dream of winning his first was left in tatters after his car twice ran into early sand trouble on the run from San Juan de Marcona to Arequipe in Peru.

    The French ace’s hopes of adding a Dakar to his nine world rally championships at the third attempt had appeared encouraging after climbing to second in the standings following the fourth stage.

    But instead he was left rebooking his flight home after his Peugeot became stuck in the dunes twice, with a truck having to help him out of a sand hole, costing him almost three hours.

    Yet it was an injury suffered by co-driver Daniel Elena as they descended a dune that forced Loeb to bring a premature end to his 2018 Dakar, 10 days before the finish in Cordoba, Argentina.

    “He screams as soon as I go over 30 km/h, I can’t see how we can go on like this,” explained Loeb.

    He added: “It went badly, the dunes are too soft, we did not see the hole, we hit it hard … It’s over, Daniel is bad, but he’ll be okay. It’s so soft, without the (assistance) truck, we wouldn’t have got out,” Loeb told France Television.

    After his fourth stage win on Tuesday Loeb was placed seven minutes second to Peterhansel in another Peugeot.

    France’s ‘Mr Dakar’ has won the car title seven times with a further six titles on two wheels, the first coming way back in 1991.

    Honda’s Spanish rider Joan Barreda Hort won the motorbike stage with Yamaha’s Adrien van Beveren retaining the overall lead.

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