Nasser Al-Attiyah Holds Off Sebastian Loeb to Win His Fourth Dakar Rally

Nasser Al-Attiyah and co-driver Mathieu Baumel have won the car category of the 2022 Dakar Rally, Al-Attiyah's fourth win in the event. It was Al-Attiyah's second win with Toyota's Gazoo Racing Hilux, the truck he has driven in every Dakar since 2017. In addition to winning this rally and the 2019 edition with Toyota, he also finished second in 2018, 2020, and 2021.

Al-Attiyah had been in complete control of the rally from the middle of the first week, winning both opening stages while every other competitive entry suffered some sort of catastrophic delay in the event's opening days. His final margin of victory, 27 minutes, is actually deceptively small; Al-Attiyah spent the entire final week of the rally avoiding risks to ensure a safe finish without a serious mistake early.

Sebastian Loeb and Fabian Lurquin finished second with Prodrive's BRX Hunter T1+ program, another 30 minutes clear of the Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Michael Orr Toyota entry that rounded out the podium. Mattias Ekstrom and Emil Bergkvist, the lead car from Audi's ambitious RS Q E-Tron program, finished nearly three hours back in a distant ninth. However, the Audi program rallied from serious misfortunes on the rally's opening stages to win four stages and prove the car's potential on the open road.

This year's Dakar Rally was held in Saudi Arabia, the third event in the desert since relocating from South America in 2020. The Dakar Rally has not actually run on its traditional Paris-to-Dakar route since 2001 and has not been held on the continent of Africa at all since 2007.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2022 DAKAR RALLY, COURTESY OF RED BULL CONTENT POOL

2022 Dakar Rally Final Standings

Car Race

1, N. AL-ATTIYAH (QAT), Toyota, 38 hours, 33 minutes, 3 seconds

2, S. LOEB (FRA), BRX, +27:46

3, Y. AL RAJHI (SAU), Toyota, +1:01:13

4, O. TERRANOVA (ARG), BRX, +1:27:23