Rallying - Dakar Rally - Stage 3 - Bisha to Al Henakiyah - Saudi Arabia - January 7, 2025 The Dacia Sandriders' Sebastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin in action during stage 3 REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
(Reuters) -Nine-times world rally champion Sebastien Loeb is out of the Dakar Rally after he rolled his Dacia in the Saudi desert on Tuesday as the race continued to take a toll of the big names after the exit of 2024 winner Carlos Sainz.
An inspection conducted by the FIA's technical stewards after stage three has led to Loeb being forbidden to continue because of damage to his car's roll bar.
Sainz turned his Ford upside down on Sunday, dealing too much damage to the car's roll cage to continue after just two stages, and Loeb's race has ended in a similar fashion, ending his hopes of a first Dakar win.
Loeb, who had started the day sixth, and co-driver Fabian Lurquin were unhurt in the incident 12km into the third 327km stage from Bisha to Al-Henakiyah and resumed after making repairs.
They stopped again at the 63km mark and finished the stage trailing South Africa's overall leader Henk Lategan by an hour and 14 minutes and dropping out of the top 15 before being forced to withdraw.
South African Saood Variawa won the day for the Toyota Gazoo factory team, at 19 the youngest Dakar stage winner in the top car category, ahead of Mini's Guerlain Chicherit and Toyota's Seth Quintero.
"Towards the end, in the last five kilometres, we hit a big rock and got a puncture, but nonetheless it was a really good drive on our side," said Variawa.
Lategan, only 12th fastest on the stage, leads Qatar's five-times winner Nasser Al-Attiyah, Loeb's teammate, in the category by seven minutes and 17 seconds with Ford's Mattias Ekstroem third.
Saudi Arabia's Yazeed Al-Rajhi dropped from second to fourth overall while double Dakar motorcycle champions Toby Price of Australia and Sam Sunderland of Britain slid from fourth to sixth in their first Dakar on four wheels.
In the motorcycle category, Spanish Sherco rider Lorenzo Santolino took his first stage win but Australian Daniel Sanders retained the overall lead, a minute and 57 seconds clear of American Skyler Howes.
Wednesday's fourth stage is a 415km special from Al-Henakiyah to Al Ula.
The two-week rally, regarded as the world's toughest endurance event and now held entirely in Saudi Arabia, ends on Jan. 17.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, additional reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Christian Radnedge and Toby Davis)
