The 11th stage of the Dakar 2024 may have been decisive in the cars. Sébastien Loeb had suspension problems in his Prodrive Hunter that cost him a lot of time, leaving Carlos Sainz with the title almost guaranteed. Guerlain Chicherit was the winner.
On a day when Overdrive Racing prevailed, two of their Toyotas finished in the top two positions. Chicherit set the pace, beating the prologue winner, Guillaume de Mevius, by 5m32s. Shortly after, at 5m35s, Sainz (Audi) finished third, with Mattias Ekström (Audi) and Saood Variawa (Toyota) completing the top five. Vaidotas Zala, navigated by Portuguese Paulo Fiúza (X-Raid Arijus Team), performed well after the problems of recent days, signing the eighth time. Loeb (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) finished the stage only in 36th in the T1U, losing 1h28m15s to the winner of the day.
With only one stage remaining, Sainz comfortably leads with a 1h26m06s advantage over the new second-place, de Mevius. Loeb dropped to third after today’s problems, being almost ten minutes behind the vice-leadership and with a little over five minutes of advantage over Chicherit. Martin Prokop (Orlen Jipocar Team/Ford) rose to fifth. After entering the stage in third, Lucas Moraes (Toyota) suffered damage to the car’s suspension, which took him out of contention for the podium after a very consistent performance so far. The Brazilian dropped to ninth. Mathieu Serradori (Century) also had problems, which dropped him to tenth when he still glimpsed the group of the top five.
Top ten of Stage 11:
Top ten overall:
