DAKAR RALLY:Carlos Sainz underlined his status as favourite for the Dakar Rally title with victory in the fourth stage of the race today.
The Spaniard completed the 488-kilometre stage between Ingeniero Jacobacci and Neuquen in three hours 42 minutes and 57 seconds, six seconds better than Qatari racer Nasser Al-Attiyah, who is 3min 46sec behind Sainz in the overall standings.
"We started very well and very quickly. We soon caught up with Nasser Al Attiyah. When he realised it was us, he counter-attacked and we both continued to race at a very speedy pace, until I was able to overtake on an off-track section," said Volkswagen racer Sainz.
"However, just afterwards, I started losing air from a tyre. I had to stop and pump it back up, because it wasn't a flat tyre, just a slow puncture. I was regularly losing tyre pressure right up until the end of the special stage."
The Qatari driver added: "I think Carlos Sainz overtook me just before we reached the 100-kilometre mark. After that, I followed on his tail and we raced up to the finish.
"It's not a problem that he won the stage. It's even a good thing for me that he will be leading the way for a stage where there should be sand dunes."
Frenchman Luc Alphand (Mitsubishi) finished in third position today, 1.17 behind Sainz, to climb up to eighth in the overall standings.
Marc Coma (KTM) seems unstoppable among the motorbikes as he celebrated his third victory out of four special stages.
Today, he crossed the line in 4:09.32. The standout performer, though, was arguably title-holder Cyril Despres, who managed to complete the stage in second place, 1min 17sec behind Coma, after suffering a number of tyre problems in the previous stages.
Coma leads the overall standings, 42min 57sec ahead of American Jonah Street, who finished third today, four seconds behind Despres.
In the truck category, Gerard de Rooy, Tom Colsoul and Marcel van Melis (Ginaf) won their second stage in the competition in 2:21.42, with a two-minute gap over the Russian trio of Firdaus Kabirov, Aydar Belyaev and Andrey Mokeev.
Finally, Spain's Joan Manuel Gonzalez (Yamaha) won the fourth stage of the quads and claimed his first success on the Dakar ahead of overall leader Christophe Declerck (Yamaha).
Tomorrow's fifth stage will see the competitors go from Neuquen to San Rafael and will cover 763km, of which 506km will be timed.