Anyone who have really driven a car in anger -I don’t mean the “uncle” or “cousin” who entered three classic runs and though he did rallying – I am talking driving like your life truly did depend on it, while adrenaline cut off all blood supply to your brain. Real honest to goodness – so help me – driving!
Those people will know what happened to Master Blaster no one can go faster – Sebastien Loeb yesterday.
Top of the pile rally navigator Daniel Elena whispered in true French style, cool, calm and collected – “á droit” and Seb got it mixed up.
Then what he tried to prevent happened – the god of motorsport who has been sitting on his shoulder for many years keeping one eye on everything, had the other eye also shut for a moment and they got stuck.
Stuck! For Pete’s sake!
Seb felt on his shoulders and woke up the little god.
“What the hell? Were you sleeping?” he asked in excited French. “What now? What now?” he asked repeating like a typical Frenchie.
”Maintenant vous êtes coincé dans le sable, de sortir et de crueser. Depacer!” came the reply – “but I am your one and only Sebi” – “Shutup and do as I told you – get out, take a shovel and dig!”
Now before you get the wrong idea and think that I am saying the champ did not practice getting stuck and unstuck before the Dakar, you have it wrong. Seb practiced digging trenches in which you could fit two Peugeot 2008’s every day for three months. He did a three bedroomed house foundation in 19m14s on any Monday on the beach. He knew exactly what to do, but could not believe that he got stuck and that caused the three second delay!
Eventually, losing 5 minutes, which in Dakar terms can of course mean anything from “nothing” now to, “too much” on Saturday, they were on their way again – with a vengeance!
When Sebi hit 6th gear Daniel Elena pulled both his harness shoulders straps twice just to make sure he was truly strapped in and then concentrated on the road map.
The sand of the desert, the Mexican roll-bushes, camel turd and tortoise hair came flying by.
Elena knew they were going to make up the 5 minutes they lost and they were going to make that up quickly.
The god of Motorsport with both his dark and yellow glasses on, on top of each other, said to himself that he should rather have gone with Al-Attiyah who at least knew his way around in the desert.
He held onto the Peltor cable – when suddenly all three of them shouted “oh fark” – two in French and one in Hebrew. All gods, big and small receive their education in Hebrew from crèche to Temple.
They shouted because there was a hole in the road – well to be honest a little bit on the side of the road.
The Peugeot tried to dig in and did its best to stay out of the deep hole, but as the picture shows, to no avail, in any language!
Peterhansel later reported, while he was still working on his ego – because not long before the said hole, Sebi overtook him so fast he got out of his Peugeot and …. (Now I, old Leon am really talking nonsense).
Anyway still bedazzled by the passing maneuver when he had to do the TV interview, he actually said “when Loeb overtook me again” – he had to correct himself saying that he only overtook him once, but then said that there was a hole in the road, “Loeb hit it and rolled. I am not sure how many times….”
The rest is history – the Dakar leader of yesterday morning – with the help of Elena and the other one, got the poor Peugeot going again and they made it to the end of the stage – now lying in eight spot.
65 minutes behind Peterhansel…
For those of you that have nothing better to do – this is part of what I wrote, but did not publish before the stage yesterday – ends with a opinion about the rest of this week – so read it, you do not have anything better to do, anyway.
“In Afrikaans there is a saying that says “Goed begin is half gewin” – now for the sake of a few of my overseas readers – that means “well started means bugger-all”.
On the Dakar rally there is hardly a stage that can be seen as easy – or that the rally is over before the final few yards over the finish line on Saturday coming.
Sebastien Loëb did indeed start fantastically well – but the challenge especially for him and Daniel Elena truly starts this week .
The teams will meet up with the first dunes on the 393km section between Salta and Belén today (Monday 11th) and Elena will have to sit up straight with neck stretched to make sure that the Seb does not go “à gauche” when he had to go “à droite!”
As I said nothing is easy on this rally – but the real test for Loëb will start this week.
He will only have about 2 and a bit days where he will be able to run away from most of the other drivers.
Today and tomorrow (Tuesday) will not be all that challenging except for a few tricky navigation spots, and Loëb will probably try to put as much daylight between him and the other two Peugeots as he possibly can on these two days to try and make his life bearable on Wednesday and Thursday when they will be driving over real sand and dunes. Wednesday will actually determine this event – mark my words!
If on Friday morning he trails by anything less than 2 minutes – I believe he will still win this event as Friday seems if it will be a real driver test.”
So there you have it – yesterdays effort to predict, but Loeb’s progress did not go according to plan or hopeful prediction.
Now what?
Keep Wednesday and Thursday in mind – when anything can happen.
Peterhansel is now without doubt the favourite with Sainz second trailing by “only” 2m9s.
This dear Dakar experts is where the problem may just come in. Sainz is not going to allow Peterhansel to take the first prize without knowing that he was in a fight – a Spanish Bull fight!
That is exactly where the very scarce desert paw-paw may hit the fan!
Peterhansel has the nerves to sleep with a lion and a snake in the same cage at the same time and will not easily be pushed into doing anything stupid – but if King Carlos manages to stay on four wheels – right side up – the said paw-paw may just cause the problems Peterhansel does not want.
If Peterhansel manage to open a substantial gap today and maintain it tomorrow – he should be safe, but Sainz’ pace may just upset this little apple cart.
A driver who is actually doing much better than what the media or anyone gives him credit, is Hirvonen who is lying in fourth behind team mate Al-Attiyah, who in turn is trailing Peterhansel by 12m34s.
Hirvonen in a Mini however is 21m59s behind Al-Attiyah and there is almost no chance that he will be able to catch the former. I don’t believe that that is his intention anyway. A waiting game may bring him 3rd spot overall on a dust and sand-covered tray!
Then we find the first of our own team – Leeroy Poulter in the Toyota that simply had no answers so far to especially the Peugeots performance.
Yes a Toyota won a stage – and Alrajhi managed to stay with the leaders when the altitude was 2000m above where the Toyota’s really function – but it simply seems to be a “no contest” situation.
Glyn Hall will have to come up with something that walks the walk and makes the torque.
If the rules change for 2017?
I don’t think that will worry the diesels too much anyway. They will simply come up with something that will do the trick.
Leeroy’s team mate Alrajhi is only trailing him by 4m47 and could make Leeroy’s life difficult, but hopefully they will not be allowed to do what Sainz and Peterhansel is going to do – and that is to put so much pressure on each other that the wheels may come off totally.
Giniel in turn has Alrajhi clearly in his site – two blinks of an eye away. 30s is all it is going to take for him to move up a spot and then – he will without doubt do or not do, what I said Alrajhi should not do.
The silly question now is if our Giniel should worry about the multiple world champion Sebastien Loeb who is a rather handy 10m21s behind him?
If I was Giniel I would have worried a bit, but luckily he is not me and he will probably chase the two Toyotas ahead of him and by doing that I do not believe Loeb will catch up with any of the Toyotas as the other two will also not slack the pace.
Then again – do you know Loeb?
Vasilyev (Toyota) is 3m32s behind Loeb, but that gap will open rather than close, with Roma (Mini) a full 19m33 further behind. Van Loon in another Mini is 1m43s behind Roma in tenth.
So, that is it for now – let’s wait and see who gets by the Dakar’s bite!