Peterhansel takes 50th Dakar Cars stage win

In doing so, ‘Monsieur Dakar’ moved to ninth overall at 13:16s away from the lead, which is now held by fellow Team Audi Sport driver Carlos Sainz.

The Spaniard is 1:51s up on Overdrive Toyota driver Yazeed Al Rajhi, with Bahrain Raid Xtreme’s Sebastien Loeb third in his Prodrive Hunter at 4:17s off the pace.

First of the factory Toyota Gazoo Racing entries is that of Seth Quintero in fourth, 7:36s away from top spot, ahead of another Hilux pilot in Overdrive Racing’s Stage 1 winner Guillaume de Mevius.

Mattias Ekstrom (Team Audi Sport) holds sixth and Nasser Al-Attiyah moved up to seventh, 12:16s from the summit, despite another difficult day for the five-time Dakar champ in his Hunter.

Stage 2 was a 463km special between Al Henakiyah and Al Duwadimi, including around 30km of dunes near the beginning before opening up into a fast dirt track.

Peterhansel, who boasts 14 Dakar crowns already, was fastest almost all day, with Quintero nosing ahead by 10 seconds at the Kilometre 167 waypoint.

However, as the Frenchman in the RS Q e-tron began to gap the American, another Frenchman moved into second place.

Loeb would reach the finish line 29 seconds behind Peterhansel, who is now the joint record holder for Dakar stage wins on four wheels with Ari Vatanen.

While it was a better day for Al-Attiyah than the previous one, with the Qatari halving his deficit relative to the overall lead after multiple punctures on Stage 1, there was still frustration.

This time, it was a broken rear arm on his Hunter, with Al-Attiyah in contention for a stage win early on before losing more than seven minutes in the third sector.

“We pushed from the beginning, but we broke a rear arm and we stopped for more than 10 minutes to repair,” said the man who drove a factory Toyota Hilux last year.

“I think it’s a weak point of this car because Seb [Loeb] broke the same arm yesterday. We’ll try to speak with the team to fix the problems.

“I enjoy the car a lot, even with all the problems we had today and yesterday, we’re still in the game, it’s only 12 minutes in the overall.”

Stage 3 runs from Al Duwadimi to Al Salamiya, with the 438km special being a mixture of rocks, sand, and dunes.

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General classification: Cars Top 10