Yahoo Autos Ekstrom tops Dakar prologue as Al-Attiyah struggles
Sweden’s Mattias Ekström was victorious in his Audi on the opening prologue of the 46th Dakar Rally, which is running for the fifth time in the Saudi Arabian desert. The opening 27km/16.8-mile loop provided a mix of sandy and rocky terrain — a microcosm of what the competitors can expect on their 7,891km/4903-mile trek on roads, tracks and dunes, including 4,727km/2937 miles of specials, that runs through Jan. 19.
Ekström put his rallycross experience to good use to dominate his rivals with his Audi RS Q e-tron (pictured above). The Swede edged out America’s Seth Quintero, who began his career in the Ultimate class with panache, achieving the second-best time of the day for Toyota, even though the times are not taken into account for the general rankings. Quintero went all out to gain the opportunity of choosing an advantageous starting position tomorrow morning, as did Sebastien Loeb in third.
Brazilian brothers Marcos and Cristian Baumgart made a notable start to this Dakar with the fourth- and fifth-best times, but it was a rough start for reigning Dakar champion Nasser Al Attiyah, who has switched from Toyota to a Prodrive Hunter this year. The Qatari ranked only 12th after making a small navigation mistake. However, that is a much better situation than if he had finished in 10th place, where he would likely have been obliged to lead the way for the first official stage tomorrow.
In the bikes, Tosha Schareina began his first race as an official team rider by leading home Daniel Sanders and Ross Branch. The prologue proved disastrous for America’s Skyler Howes, who was a distant 42nd. The Monster Energy Honda rider was delayed by a crash, and then got lost in the canyons of AlUla.
“It was really not a good start for me. They keep doing these strange things like on the prologues,” fumed Howes. “You’re supposed to go through stakes but we’re off-piste, so we’re going off-track and then, more or less, you have to figure out where they want you to go. There was one moment where I came back and saw the stakes we were supposed to go through, so I cut back to go through them but hit some camel grass and had a big crash. Then my roadbook stopped working so I had no roadbook and there was one note that was tricky, you had to go through a canyon, and because I had no roadbook I was more or less following the tracks that were going all over the place. I lost more time there and got a little bit lost.
“I’m super unhappy with the start of this, but we have 14 more days so anything can happen. Tomorrow’s going to be a really long day because my time was really not so good, so I’m almost positive that I’ll be opening the stage, which is not ideal, but I’ll do my best. Now we’ll get back to the bivouac to repair the motorcycle.”
Saturday’s first official stage will be a 414km/274-mile course snaking around volcanos to Al Henakiyah.
Editor’s note: MAVTV’s coverage of Dakar Rally highlights will now air at 2pm ET/PT each day rather than 12pm as previously scheduled. Replays will air at 5pm ET/PT and 7pm ET/PT.
Highlights also air each day on Peacock at 7:30pm ET.
