Ekstrom wins his first special stage of Dakar Rally 2022
Hi, friends!
Multiple motorsport champion in various disciplines Mattias Ekstrom finally won his first special stage and it was stage number eight of this year's Dakar Rally. This is also a prove that new Audi electric prototype can do so much with the electric power, even on the super long special stages of almost 900km (with road section) during one day.
Two of the guys in front - Nasser Al-Attiyah and Seb Loeb are in the race of their own but after eight days of competition, it is still almost 38 minutes gap between them with Al-Attiyah leading and Loeb chasing him every day.
Al-Attiyah broke the rear power train today so he had to drive only front wheel drive car for probably 300km and with also one puncture. It seems that Loeb also had some technical issues because he didn't take an edge of him today. Prodrive mechanics had to change a reservoir during the last night because they suspected that something was going on with it. It took a whole night of work and today Loeb finished 3rd overall in his Bahrein Raid Extreme Hunter.
Audi's top driver - Stephane Peterhanse is still in the rally but only technically because he is not in the results after an early retirement. He works as a spare parts mule for his team mates Carlos Sainz and Ekstrom but he can still finish the special stage 2nd overall as he did today.
Carlos Sainz sr finished 4th during today's stage but he is still outside of top 10 because of the tough navigational mistake in the early part of the rally.
One of the surprises of the rally - Lucio Alvarez is out of top 10 after doing phenomenal times on the stages because of the mechanical problem which took him three hours and he will hardly finish in the top 15 after this bad problem.
Kuba Przygónski took Alvarez's 4th place after another great special stage in his X-Raid Mini JCW and if he can keep it like this, it will be his result of the career.
Yazeed Al-Rajhi didn't have the best stage today but managed to finish 10th overall and he is still in 3rd place overall.
Orlando Terranova is 5th overall in the vehicle the same as Loeb's but he can't match the results on nine time WRC champion Loeb. I think that 5th place overall is very good for Terranova this year and this could be a good boost for the seasons to follow.
Let the best win - as always...
Here is the VIDEO LINK where you can watch 21 minute epizode of day 8 at Dakar Rally 2022
Credit for photos and videos to Dakar and Youtube.
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