A navigational error had seen Loeb’s deficit increase to 24:27s on Stage 8, but he chipped that back to 20:33s with his latest victory on what was a mostly sandy, 417km special between Ha’il and AlUla.

Still, with three stages to go, the odds are well in favour of ‘El Matador’ in one of the three Team Audi Sport entries, and the start of the latest special helped to demonstrate why.

Mattias Ekstrom and Stephane Peterhansel, in the other RS Q e-trons, opened the road and the latter stopped at the start of the stage in order to follow Sainz and respond to any dramas for his team-mate.

Although that made Loeb’s task of winning the stage even easier – and the Frenchman was fastest all the way through despite two punctures – he is unlikely to have the same safety net from fellow Prodrive Hunter steerer Nasser Al-Attiyah tomorrow.

For the second day in a row, the Qatari had to exit the special due to mechanical problems and was officially classified 157th in the Cars, meaning he will start far down the road order on Stage 10.

Loeb said, “We had two punctures in the middle, so at the end I had to be a bit careful not to have a third one.”

Sainz remarked, “I’m happy with the stage, keeping in mind that I opened quite a lot.

“At the end it was very stressful inside the car when the navigation was very difficult.

“We rode as three cars together today and that was good. I knew I had some support behind me.”

Third place on the day went to Century Racing Factory Team’s Mathieu Serradori, 29 seconds behind Sainz and 4:43s behind Loeb, with Overdrive Racing’s Guillaume De Mevius fourth in a Toyota Hilux.

Overall, fellow Hilux driver Lucas Moraes of Toyota Gazoo Racing is third at 1:12:02s off the pace, with De Mevius nearly 28 minutes further back in fourth.

Stage 10 is a loop around AlUla.

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General classification: Cars Top 10