Sebastien Loeb's decision to 'go slow' in stage five earlier in the week paid off on Friday as the Frenchman won the marathon two-day stage 6 at the Dakar Rally.
Veteran Spaniard Carlos Sainz finished second 2min 01sec behind and took the overall lead while five-time winner Nasser Al-Attiyah saw his hopes of winning a sixth title disappear with a mechanical problem in the last 50 kilometres.
Adrien van Beveren made it a double French success with victory in the bike race.
Loeb, a nine-time world rally champion, deliberately lost time on Wednesday so that he would not have to open the road on the virgin dunes at the start of the an unprecedented two-day marathon around Shubaytah — a 780km loop in the kingdom's vast Empty Quarter with more than 600km of specials for motorcycles and nearly 550km for cars.
Loeb, who has yet to win a Dakar Rally, started Friday's second part of the stage in third place, 37min behind Sainz, but carved his way through the dunes to claim his second stage win of the rally, having also taken stage 4.
"The strategy was the right one," said the Prodrive competitor who has moved up to third in the standings 29min 31sec behind Sainz.
“It was a good day for us, a good stage with no problems. It was very long, so the first part of the stage yesterday (Thursday) was more than 400km. I tried to take it a bit easy for the car especially and not to be too hard on the car.
"I knew that it would be very hard mechanically for it to go through so many kilometres in the dunes.
"Today, there were 150km left so I tried to push harder on this one, to get a good time and that’s what we did. So, there have been no problems at all for us with this long stage.
"For the second week we'll have to continue to find the right rhythm.
"If you have any mistakes on just one stage you lose a lot of time and you are far behind, so we need to be consistent until the end."
'Still very open'
The 61-year-old three-time Dakar winner Sainz showed the value of experience as he brought his Audi home safely in second place gaining over eight minutes on his teammate Mattias Ekstrom of Sweden, who is second in the standings 20min 21sec behind the veteran.
"It was quite a difficult stage, but I think we managed to do a good job," said Sainz.
"If you asked before this week 'would we be leading?' I would say I am happy. But there is still a long way to go. It's still very open."
The unforgiving nature of the terrain, however, claimed another victim as Al-Attiyah became the third big gun in two days to kiss his hopes goodbye.
Thursday had seen the end of Saudi Yazeed Al-Rajhi, overall leader at the time, who rolled his Toyota and 'Mr Dakar' — 14-time winner Stephane Peterhansel — who suffered a hydraulic failure that prevented him from using the jack to change a wheel.
Al-Attiyah avoided retiring in spite of breaking his steering by finishing the stage 2hr 45min behind his teammate Loeb and will now focus on helping the Frenchman to a first overall victory.
"We'll try to keep going and we'll see what we can do," said the Qatari.
"Everything is not finished. I will try to help Seb, to be behind him. At least he can win this Dakar. I will do my best for him to win because we are a team."
In the bike category, van Beveren (Honda) took his fourth Dakar stage win since his first appearance in 2016.
He finished 4min 13sec ahead of Australian Toby Price (KTM) and 5min 2sec in front of the American Ricky Brabec (Honda), who has taken the overall lead from Ross Branch (Hero), albeit only by a slender 51sec.
Van Beveren is third overall, 9min 21sec behind teammate Brabec.
Saturday sees the competitors taking a well-earned rest day in Riyadh, their only day off in the rally, before resuming on Sunday with stage 7 which includes a 483km special as they head to Al-Duwadimi.
AFP