HARADH: Local driver Yazeed Al Rajhi took advantage of a miserable stage by South Africa’s Henk Lategan to grab the Dakar Rally lead in the Saudi Arabia desert on Tuesday.
Lategan led the Dakar for the past week, but errors and bad luck on the 357-kilometer ninth stage from Riyadh south-east to Haradh turned his overall lead of more than five minutes over Al Rajhi into a potentially decisive seven-minute deficit.
The rally has effectively two days and 400 kilometers remaining in the dunes of the Empty Quarter. The last day, Friday, is a ceremonial drive to the finish line in Shubaytah.
Al Rajhi, like Lategan, has never won the Dakar. This is the Saudi’s 11th attempt with a best finish of third in 2022. He’d been lying second since last Wednesday. The title race appears to be between only them.
Third-placed Mattias Ekström of Sweden and five-time champion Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar were about 25 minutes behind.

“It’s a bit of disaster to be honest,” Lategan said. “About 13 kilometers in we got lost. We thought we missed the waypoint but we actually had it. When we got lost we got one puncture and then toward 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.”
Lategan and navigator Brett Cummings were 11th on the stage and Al Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk third.
“We did a great job like we planned to,” Al Rajhi said. “We pushed well. We enjoyed it, that’s the most important. I hope everything goes well the next two or three days to win the Dakar ... I will fight to win. It won’t be easy.”
Al-Attiyah won the stage ahead of Belgium’s Guillaume de Mévius in under three hours to rise to one minute off third place overall.
His 49th car stage win, and first in the Dakar for Romanian manufacturer Dacia, lifted him to only one behind the record jointly held by Finland’s Ari Vatanen and France’s Stephane Peterhansel.
Sanders cushions motorbike lead
Australian rider Daniel Sanders bolstered his motorbike lead to nearly 15 minutes when closest challenger, Spain’s Tosha Schareina, crashed early.
The back wheel of Schareina’s Honda hit a rock and sent him flying only 20 kilometers in. He resumed racing but the nearly four minutes he finished behind Sanders dropped him in the general standings.
Schareina’s teammate Adrien van Beveren of France remained third, more than 20 minutes behind, while Sanders’ KTM teammate Luciano Benavides of Argentina strengthened his position in fourth place by winning his second successive stage.
Benavides, thanks to collecting time bonuses of nearly five minutes by opening the way, beat Van Beveren by nearly two minutes, and repeated his win into Haradh two years ago. Sanders was third after leading until about 70 kilometers from the end.
“I only got lost a couple of times ... and lost a little bit of time,” Sanders said. “I could have pushed and made some more (time) but it’s not too bad.”

HA’IL: Five-time champion Nasser Al-Attiyah was stripped of a smashing stage win in the Dakar Rally because of a missing spare wheel on Thursday.
Instead, American driver Seth Quintero was promoted to first for the second time in a week, beating Al-Attiyah by one second.
French rider Adrien van Beveren also had the motorbike stage win taken from him after he was penalized two minutes for speeding in the Saudi Arabia desert. Instead, Luciano Benavides of Argentina was given first place by 47 seconds from Van Beveren.
Al-Attiyah initially won the fifth stage from AlUla 428 speedy kilometers east to rocky Ha’il after 4 1/2 hours by a whopping 9 minutes, 59 seconds. But the missing spare wheel cost him a 10-minute penalty, dropping the Qatari to second and bumping Quintero to first.
Quintero also was promoted to first on the first stage on Saturday after he was credited time for helping a crashed rival.
The 22-year-old Quintero, who suffered three punctures on Wednesday, was barely helped in the overall standings as he was 1 1/2 hours behind Toyota teammate and race leader Henk Lategan.
But the penalty was a double blow for Al-Attiyah, who made up only 53 seconds on Lategan and was 35 minutes behind the South African leader going into the rest day Friday.
Lategan was fourth on the stage, stretching his overall lead on second-placed Yazeed Al Rajhi to 10 minutes and third-placed Mattias Ekstrom to 21 minutes. None of the leading three drivers have won the Dakar and only Al Rajhi has made the podium, a third in 2022.
“It was the hardest first week of my career on the Dakar,” Al Rajhi said amidst his 11th Dakar and sixth on home ground. “All the stages were long, tough and difficult everywhere.”
Benavides wins motorbike stage
Van Beveren led the motorbike stage for about the last 200 kilometers and thought he had his sixth career stage win, but his second speeding penalty of the race gave Benavides his fourth career stage win.
Benavides, a four-time top-10 finisher in the five Dakars he’s completed, beat Van Beveren by 47 seconds. Jose Ignacio Cornejo of Chile was third.
Benavides was seventh overall, 24 minutes behind his KTM teammate and race leader Daniel Sanders. But he suggested he was being hampered by team orders.
“I hope the strategy is going to be favorable to me in the second week,” Benavides said. “I’m happy with the bike and my pace. I feel better than I ever have. But, on this race, some decisions are made that call into question the strategic choices prepared several days before.”
The overall leaders didn’t change but Sanders’ gap on the shrinking field was cut after he was penalized eight minutes plus for speeding three times.
That reduced his overall lead to seven minutes over Spain’s Tosha Schareina and 18 minutes over Botswana’s Ross Branch. Van Beveren rose from sixth to fourth, another 30 seconds back.