After a rest day on Saturday, the second leg of Dakar 2021 commenced with marathon stage. This means that participants would have no support from the bivouac for two days. Saudi’s very own Yazeed Al-Rajhi grabbed a Stage win after almost six years with his X-Raid Mini finishing with a time of 4:21:59. Current race leader Stephan Peterhansel came in second just 48 seconds behind the local hero.
Defending champion Carlos Sainz finished third in Stage 7, just 1:15 deficit from the winner. But he is still 41:06 seconds behind in the overall leaderboard, in the third position. Meanwhile, Nasser Al-Attiyah found it hard to keep pace with the Mini buggies in his Toyota Gazoo as his fourth-place finish has conceded a lead of close to eight minutes to Peterhansel.
Jakub Przygonski managed a fifth-place finish ahead of another Saudi driver Yasir Seaidan driving his SRT racing buggy. Behind them was Dakar Legend Cyril Despres of Abu Dhabi Racing. In the eighth place was another SRT buggy driven by Mathieu Serradori trailing by just 47 seconds behind Cyril. Team X-Raid’s Vladimir Vasilyev finished ninth. Although WRC champ Sebastien Loeb has started to suffer after a setback on the previous stage, his teammate Nani Roma has held on to his fifth spot in the leaderboard, by finishing 10th in Stage 7.
Current race leader and 13-time Dakar winner Stephan Peterhansel suffered two major technical difficulties in Stage 7. Just 40kilometres in and a wheel rim of his buggy broke. After fixing that, there was a suspension failure too which he realised after crossing the line. So not only Peterhansel crossed the line in the second place, he did that with a broken suspension. No wonder he is called ‘Mr Dakar’.
