After the difficult start, Ekström and Bergkvist have steadily climbed the results list.

Today it was seven places up and the hunt continues from the 19th place in the summary, almost two hours from the lead.

- There were large dunes and tricky crests in the afternoon.

Quick parties where we took it a little cautiously.

We are still in a learning process, Mattias continues.

Triple winner leads

Toyota driver Nasser Al-Attiyah clearly leads despite an eighth place finish on the stage.

The three-time winner is almost 38 minutes ahead of Sébastien Loeb, Raid Extreme, who suffered a puncture and lost a lot of time.

Sebastian Eriksson continues to convince in the lightweight class T3 (protop types) The EKS driver is second after third place on the stage.

- Unfortunately we had to stay for a while on the stretch due to a technical problem.

But we drove as much as we could and it was a pretty good day, says Sebastian.

Fourth stage tomorrow

Eriksson, who has the Dutchman Wouter Rosegaard in the right seat, is just over nine minutes behind his teammate Feliciano Lopez, Chile, in total.

Tomorrow, the rally will continue with the fourth stage between Al Qaysumah and Riyadh.

Almost 50 km of special distances await.

MORE RALLY: Female team aims for historic start (December 21):

Javascript is disabled

Javascript must be turned on to play video

Read more about browser support

The browser is not supported

SVT does not support playback in your browser.

We therefore recommend that you switch to a different browser.

Read more about browser support

The first female team aims for a historic start in the Dakar Rally