Sainz trims Peterhansel’s lead with first Dakar stage win

Carlos Sainz has chipped away at Peugeot team-mate Stephane Peterhansel’s 2018 Dakar Rally lead with his first stage victory of this year’s event as the rally left Peru for Bolivia.

The Team Peugeot Total driver clinched the stage six win by 4m06s, with Toyota’s Gazoo Racing’s Nasser Al-Attiyah a minute further back in third place, to see Sainz trim Peterhansel’s overall classification lead to 27m10s.

Despite the gruelling 760km total distance on stage six none of the front-running contenders suffered any major setbacks after recent stages saw Sebastien Loeb and Cyril Despres drop out of the rally.

With Peterhansel holding a comfortable lead over Sainz to top the Peugeot 1-2, Bernhard ten Brinke heads up the Toyota charge in third place but a hefty 1hr 20m41s off the leader. The Dutch driver’s team-mate Al-Attiyah remains fourth over 10 minutes off of ten Brinke with Giniel de Villiers rounding out the top five.

In the bike class, Antoine Meo clinched his maiden stage win of this year’s Dakar Rally but Monster Honda’s Kevin Benavides secured the overall classification lead finishing runner-up on the sixth stage.

Benavides wrestled the overall lead from Yamaha’s Adrien van Beveren to head into the rest day with a 1m57s advantage having finished 30 seconds off of stage winner Meo. Red Bull KTM’s Matthias Walkner remains third with a 2m50s gap to new leader Benavides.