Loprais consolidated his leadership in the Dakar with second place, Valtr lost the podium

Among the truckers, Martin Macík started the stage better, reaching the first checkpoint at km 38 in 24 minutes. Second Loprais lost 26 seconds. Already in the second interval, however, the order behind Macík began to change. Dutchman Janus van Kasteren moved up to second with an eight second gap, Loprais dropped to fourth with a loss of nearly two minutes. However, he improved in the virtual battle with Martin Van den Brink for the overall lead, as the Dutch driver gained more than four minutes.

Macík whistled through the third checkpoint as fastest, but lost before the fourth waypoint at the 196th kilometer and gained more than five minutes on the faster Van Kasteren. Loprais moved past Macík into second position with a loss of 3:38 min. He then kept a three-minute gap on the Dutchman the rest of the way as Macík’s defeat mounted.

“Unfortunately we were slowed down by two stops, first the bellows on the tube came off, but the loosening of the material that holds the cab in place was much more serious. We had to cut everything out and then we drove step by step, we hope the guys manage to solve it within the two hours allowed,” Macík wrote on his Facebook.

At the finish of the measured section, Loprais was second with a loss of 3:31 min. over Van Kasteren and significantly increased his lead at the points lead. Martin Van den Brink’s deficit of more than six minutes means that the Czech driver’s lead over his Dutch rival has grown from 23 seconds to exactly three minutes.

Excellent placement of Jaroslav Valtr, who moved to third position after the problems of Mitchel Van den Brink. However, a two-minute penalty at the finish meant he dropped to fifth place. After a great start, Macík crossed the finish line in the special stage in seventh fastest time with a loss of sixteen minutes and is still in fourth place in the standings, just ahead of Valtr.

Today, Martin Šoltys brought his Tatra to the finish line in 13th place with almost an hour of loss and remains seventh in the standings. Tomáš Vrátný, on the other hand, improved from twelfth position to tenth after finishing two minutes behind Šoltys in fourteenth position.

In the car category, Yazid al-Rajhi celebrates his first triumph in this year’s Dakar and third overall. After the loss of more than five hours yesterday due to technical problems, it was only a weak point for the Saudi competitor. The leader of the standings is still the Qatari Nasir al-Attíja, who gained almost twenty minutes of disadvantage during the day, but still has an advantage of more than an hour.

In the most followed category in the world, Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka continue to maintain the eighth place, which they climbed up to yesterday. Today, the Czech crew finished in eighteenth place with a loss of 23 minutes, and in the standings they lose 2:17 hours against al-Attíja. ‘ lost,” Prokop described in the video from the finish line.

On Saturday, motorcyclists and four-wheelers had an unexpected rest day. Due to bad weather on Friday and the late arrival of many participants at the bivouac, the organizers canceled the Saturday program for these categories, and the competitors started moving across the tarmac directly to the bivouac during the morning. The others waited for 333 kilometers of special stage and a total of 861 km in the so-called marathon stage, which does not allow assistance from the mechanics before continuing on Sunday. After the end of the stage, the crews can only meet for two hours with assistance in the so-called mechanical area, where the most necessary maintenance can be carried out. After that, the teams must split up and spend the night on Sunday in separate bivouacs.