Bahrain Red Xtreme Team Advances
Details of the sixth stage of the Dakar Rally "Saudi Arabia 2022"... Loeb: "We lost our way"!
Argentinian Orlando Terranova driver for Bahrain Red Xtreme team claimed a stunning victory in the sixth stage today, Saturday, as the Dakar Rally reached the halfway point in Riyadh.
The Argentine driver, with his Spanish assistant, Dani Oliveiras, is driving one of the team's cars, Prodrive Hunter, and was faster by one minute and 6 seconds than the Swede Matias Ekström in the sixth stage and a distance of 348 km, thus continuing his rise to seventh place in the general classification of the rally.
The quality of Terranova's driving quality was underlined by the fact that he was more than six minutes faster today than Nasser Al-Attiyah who cemented his overall lead despite setting a tenth best time on the stage.
Bahrain Red Extreme's other two-time Dakar Rally winner Nani Roma and co-driver Alex Haro finished fifth on the stage in a Prodrive Hunter.
On the other hand, it was a disappointing day for nine-times world rally champion Sebastien Loeb, who lost some time in navigation but completed the first half of the Dakar in third overall along with co-worker Fabian Lorken in a Prodrive Hunter.
Sebastian was just one minute and 31 seconds behind Saudi Arabia's Yazid Al Rajhi, who trailed leader Al Attiyah by 48 minutes and 54 seconds as the rally reached its middle, with six stages remaining and nearly 2,000 kilometers to compete, when Bahrain Red Extreme rebuilds Cars in preparation for the rest of the rally.
The contestants still have six more stages before returning to Jeddah with a distance of 2,179 km, a distance similar to driving from Paris to Casablanca in Morocco.
Terranova drove a Prodrive Hunter powered by the new Prodrive EcoPower sustainable fuel for the first time at the event, reducing CO2 emissions by 80%.
"It was a very good stage, difficult in some places but easier in others, the trails of motorbikes yesterday made it easier, but we kept our focus and speed," Terranova said.
"On the way to the end of the stage, it was very difficult to navigate because there were many trails but it all worked well because for the first time since 2015 we had a stage victory and it feels great."
Loeb said: "We got lost 100km into the stage. We tried to make up for lost time. So even though we had good speed and great cadence during the stage, we lost a lot of time earlier. But we're still halfway there. Only during this rally, we will continue to push very hard and do some good performances all the way back to Jeddah."
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