DAKAR 2020

Step 8: without motorcycles at the front, 'AUTOS ‘were lost a very complicated

Day for the men in the front, who with the annulment of the eighth stage for motorcycles following the death of Paulo Gonçalves, were left without references of’ rounds' on the track and this made navigation much more complicated.
In this context, after 318 km of leg, Stéphane Peterhansel (Mini Buggy) is ninth to 6m11s from Mathieu Serradori (Buggy Century), who leads the tirade, Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota) is 12 to 9m22s and finally, the race leader, Carlos Sainz (Mini Buggy) is only 19th to lose 14m48s, meaning that in a virtual classification, Sainz has only 4m34s advance to al Attiyah and Peterhansel is only 10: 36. of course the stage is not over yet, but this is a difficult day for the men in the front.
The day started badly for Carlos Sainz. The Spaniard was 15 minutes behind Yazeed Al Rajhi at mile 158. Nasser Al-Attiyah was 7 minutes behind the Saudi pilot, which meant he was buying time from the leader of the general classification, but not Stéphane Peterhansel who was just two minutes behind the leader of the stage.
Edvinas Juškauskas had a scare 20 miles from the special. The Lithuanian fell on his Toyota Hilux and was trying to put it back on its four wheels! At this time, Mathieu Serradori, Orlando Terranova and Fernando Alonso were close to Yazeed al Rajhi, after 158 km of special. The Frenchman was only four seconds away from Saudi Arabia, the Argentinean, 30 seconds away and the Spanish, almost a minute away.
Stéphane Peterhansel arrived at neutralization at eighth position and explained the delay: "navigation is not easy, especially because there were no bikes this morning. The sand is very soft, which means it is a difficult stage"”
Soon after, Mathieu Serradori moved on to the front of the stage. The Frenchman took the lead of the special after 212 km, 49 seconds ahead of Yazeed Al Rajhi and 1m12s in front of Orlando Terranova. Stephane Peterhansel, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz stabilized the distances between them. Peterhansel led Al-Attiyah for just over three minutes and Sainz for more than 10 minutes.
Soon after, Mathieu Serradori continued to perform a perfect special and after 264 km had an advantage of 1m16s over Yazeed Al Rajhi and 1m23s over Orlando Terranova. Yasir Seaidan is in fourth, 2m51s behind the leader of the stage. Let's see how it all ends.

José Luis Abreu, Portugal