Molly Taylor admits she is “pretty exhausted” after setting the ninth-fastest time in the SSVs on the last stage before the rest day at Dakar 2022.

She and co-driver Dale Moscatt picked up a second straight top 10 with a time 9:18s away from the Stage 6 benchmark, creeping up to 18th overall following a bruising Stage 4 of her rookie Dakar campaign.

“We ended up P9, so, clean stage all in all, and we made it to the rest day,” said Taylor on social media after the latest Riyadh loop.

“We have tomorrow to go over the car and have a bit of a chill-out and re-evaluate, see where we are, and get prepared for another hectic week.

“But, this week, I’m definitely feeling pretty exhausted but it’s also, in many ways, gone by quite quickly, so we’re just really happy to make it to this point, halfway through Dakar.”

There were nevertheless a number of hair-raising moments, primarily involving the trucks.

“One of the trucks came flying past us, pulled right in front of us, so close, and threw up a huge rock, put a massive crack in the windscreen – we were really lucky that we had a windscreen,” the Can-Am driver recounted.

“Then you just hit a wall of dust and you have to almost come to a complete standstill, so it was a tough stage from that perspective.

“[In the] dune section at the end, we really enjoyed that. It was quite cool because I was sort of in and around those top trucks and following them through some of the dunes, and it was amazing.

“There was one point when there was a huge climb that we were having, so we were just full gas trying to make the top and a truck came up beside us at that point, so we were going up this huge dune, side-by-side.”

Pole Marek Goczal (Cobant-Energylandia) picked up a third stage win of the event thus far but Brazilian Rodrigo Luppi De Oliveira (South Racing Can-Am) continues to lead overall, by 6:56s.

Other classes

In the Trucks, Andrey Karginov pipped Kamaz-Master team-mate Dmitry Sotnikov by nine seconds on Stage 6, but the latter is now 10:29s clear at the head of the rally classification.

Quads is still led overall by Alexandre Giroud (Yamaha Racing – SMX), and likewise Light Prototype by Francisco Lopez Contardo (EKS – South Racing).

After the rest day, Sunday’s seventh stage takes the field south from Riyadh to Al Dawadimi.

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CLICK HERE for extended highlights of Stage 6