“It happened to me again, I'm still unlucky”: Loeb loses big in the second stage of the Dakar 2025

Sébastien Loeb a perdu beaucoup de temps au volant de sa Dacia. DPPI/ASO – Florent Gooden

Saudi Yazeed al-Rajhi (Overdrive) virtually took control of the Dakar-2025 in cars on Sunday at the end of the first part of the second stage, contested over two days (967 km of special) around Bisha in Saudi Arabia, during which one of the favorites Sébastien Loeb was left behind. 

Defending champion Carlos Sainz (Ford), who rolled over, and Sébastien Loeb (Dacia), who suffered a fan problem, have indeed lost big.

In the virtual general classification, Al-Rajhi is ahead of Qatari Nasser al-Attiyah (Dacia) by 1 min 19 and Swede Matthias Ekström (Ford) by 8 min 55. Bad day for Spaniard Carlos Sainz and Frenchman Sébastien Loeb.

“It's not ideal. We rolled over on a dune. The car is a bit damaged and so are we”, said Sainz, relegated provisionally almost an hour behind the leader. Nine-time world rally champion Sébastien Loeb, who has never won the Dakar, experienced “a major electronic glitch” with the failure of two fans.

More than half an hour lost for Loeb

He had to stop for 15 minutes and is provisionally 32 minutes behind the Saudi leader. “It happened to me again, I'm still unlucky”, he said, in comments relayed by our colleagues at L'Equipe.

At 5:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. French time), the competitors were invited to join one of the six “break zones” scattered along the course.

They will spend the night at their camp, without being able to benefit from technical assistance, before hitting the road again on Monday at sunrise to complete this “48-hour” stage which could be decisive.