Sanders hit the ground running early in the second stage of the 2023 Dakar Rally, leading for almost the entirety of the 430km race before deliberately dropping back and clearing the way for his opposition after passing the last checkpoint, to avoid starting the next stage out in front.
Despite having a 'picnic', in his own words, upon leading by over three minutes at one stage of the race, he dropped to fifth in the general classification, 2'55" behind American Mason Klein, after finishing ninth in the stage.
Meanwhile, his compatriot Price played a consistent game of keeping out of trouble and biding his time to finish the stage in fifth and moving up into second place overall in the GC, 1'41" behind eventual stage winner Klein, who is now the race leader.
It was a maiden stage victory for Klein, 21, who made his move after the first 300km after starting in third and following the others, including Aussie Sanders.
The American, who finished ninth in his Dakar Rally debut appearance last year, claimed that he was well suited to the course which proved challenging for others.
“The terrain was super good,” he said.
“The navigation was nice. The roadbook was good. The thing is, with the speed, like the top speeds in the speed zones, it’s all so much for me. It’s so much for my brain. Sometimes, I just blank. I’ll be paying attention to the speed zone and it will say, ‘Go, no turns.’ All you have to do is stay straight and follow this course. I have to almost stop, and I forget what I’m doing. I don’t know if it’s about experience. It’s pretty tough.”
Fellow American Skylar Howes, who finished third in the stage and remains 5"11' behind his compatriot in seventh overall, bemoaned the 'difficult' stage upon admitting that he had to push harder than he had initially planned and that his body was taking a battering as a consequence.
“It was a super, super challenging day, really hard on the body and machine,” said Howes, who rides a Husqvarna 450 Rally Factory. “Today was extremely rocky. The whole thing was stones. Really difficult on the body and on the machine, too. Tires took a huge beating today.
“The first part of the special was actually incredibly beautiful. We went through these huge canyons with big palm trees. It was wet, overcast, raining. Unreal. Super, super fun. But man, long day and hard on the body. It’s going to be like this the rest of the rally, so we need to play it smart and keep it going day by day.”
In the T4 SSV class, Aussies Molly Taylor and Andrew Short had a difficult time overcoming two early setbacks, both starting the stage in 13th position. First, a puncture, then a rear steering control arm which had worked itself looked partway through the stage. As a result, one of Taylor's rear tyres was rubbing on the arm itself and was causing some doubt upon whether it would survive the next refuelling point.
They made a realignment whilst refuelling after it narrowly survived, and after reconnecting the arm, they finished in sixth place overall and ninth in the GC, 32 minutes behind T4 leaders Marek Goczal and Maciej Marton.
Meanwhile, Bahrain Raid Xtreme, run by the Prodrive organisation, had a horrid second stage with nine-time World Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb and his team matte Guelain Chicherit suffering two punctures each in the early part of the stage.
Upon the race rules stating that you can only carry two spare tyres per stage and because drivers had used up both their spares, when they had a third puncture each, they were left stranded. Loeb and teammate Chicherit were left to lament what could have been in their pursuit for a maiden Dakar win with their rallies effectively over.
However, the main focus of the race is now on the battle between Toyota and Audi and its drivers Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz Snr. The long-time fierce rivals exchanged a war of words in the lead up to the event, having not gone unnoticed by many.
Al-Attiyah failed to enjoy the stage as his Hilux was not suited to the terrain that was 28% stony, and suffered a puncture during the stage as a result. He did, however, enjoy a stage-long tussle between himself and Sainz Snr as they swapped the overall lead a number of times throughout the race.
“It was absolutely the time to attack and drive a good stage,” Al-Attiyah said. “It was not an easy day because I am sure a lot of problems will happen today because there were a lot of rocks, and the navigation wasn’t easy. I’m really quite happy to make day two a good stage. We had one flat tire, one puncture at the beginning, but after that we tried to be really careful in the stony places. In the sand, we pushed, and I’m quite happy. I was thinking the start of the race would be very easy, but it was really tricky. Well done to the organizers”.
Al-Attiyah would take out the stage, with Erik van Loon in second and Sainz in third. Sainz retains the lead in the GC over Al-Attiyah by 2'12", with Matthieu Serradori 24 minutes behind in third.
Catch all the highlights of the second stage tonight on SBS from 5pm (AEDT) and on SBS On Demand.
