Video: Dakar Stage 9 Summary

Pending validation by the race stewards, Nasser Al-Attiyah (VW) picked up his 3rd stage victory on the 32nd Dakar and the 6th of his career in the event, by beating his Spanish team-mate Carlos Sainz (VW), who again suffered a puncture today, by 5’59 and his South African teammate Giniel de Villiers (VW) by 7’38.

More importantly, this new triumph enabled the Qatari to climb up the general standings to only 8’36 from the leader, his team-mate “El Matador" Sainz. It demonstrates that there are no racing orders for the moment within the Volkswagen team, who nonetheless still boast 3 Race Touaregs in the first 3 places, with American Mark Miller (VW) comfortably placed 3rd, 27’17 behind the leader, whereas the 4th placed driver, Stéphane Peterhansel (BMW), trails by 2.13:52.

In the Open category, there were no surprises as American Robby Gordon (Hummer) was triumphant for the 8th time out of 9 stages in the race. Lastly, in the Production category, the stage victories are continuing to be shared by the official Toyota cars. As a result, Japan’s Jun Mitsuhashi won his 4th special stage of this 32nd edition, 3’23 ahead of his team-mate and major rival, title holder, Nicolas Gibon (Toyota). Nevertheless, the Frenchman is still comfortably in the lead, 58’28 ahead of the Japanese driver.