Dakar 2022, Stage 10: Peterhansel wins, Loeb closes on Al-Attiyah

Stephane Peterhansel scored Audi’s third stage victory of the 2022 Dakar Rally on Wednesday, as Sebastien Loeb gained more time on overall leader Nasser Al-Attiyah by finishing fifth.

Peterhansel had been in fine form throughout the 375km between Wadi Ad Dawasir and Bisha, one of the fastest stages of the rally, running a close second to teammate Carlos Sainz early on before grabbing the lead at the third waypoint.

Once out in front, the 14-time Dakar winner steadily extended his advantage over the chasing pack, eventually sealing victory by 2m06s over Sainz.

This was Peterhansel’s first stage victory of Dakar 2022 and ensures that all three Audi drivers have now won a stage this year, following Sainz’s triumph on the third test and Ekstrom’s success on Monday.

Prodrive/Bahrain driver Orlando Terranova ended up as the closest challengers to the leading two Audis, jumping the Toyota of Henk Lategan right at the end to secure his best result since winning Stage 6 last week.

Lategan eventually finished 12 seconds behind Terranova having held the third spot for much of the day, but still ended up as the best finisher for Toyota with Al-Attiyah only seventh and Tuesday’s stage winner Giniel de Villiers down in 12th.

WRC legend Loeb fell as low as eighth in his Prodrive entry but rebounded strongly to finish fifth, crucially 1m35s and two places ahead of his title rival Al-Attiyah.

Following his first-ever Dakar stage victory on Tuesday, Ekstrom had a low-key day as he dropped just over 10 minutes to his winning teammate Peterhansel, finishing 11th.

In the overall standings, Al-Attiyah takes a reduced lead of 32m40s into the final two stages towards Jeddah. This follows a five-minute penalty for the Qatari driver for a seat belt infringement that was recorded in Monday’s Stage 8 but not acted upon until the following day.

Overdrive's Yazeed Al Rajhi sits some way behind the leading duo in third, while Terranova strengthened his fourth position in the overall standings ahead of Jakub Przygonski (X-raid Mini) and de Villiers.

Mechanical trouble for Martin Prokop has promoted Ekstrom to 10th place in the general classification.

Overall classification after Stage 10:

Pos.	Name	Car	Time	Gap	Penalty
1	Nasser Al-Attiyah	TOYOTA	33:13:37		00:05:00
2	Sebastien Loeb	PRODRIVE	33:46:17	+00:32:40	00:00:00
3	Yazeed Al Rajhi	TOYOTA	34:09:25	+00:55:48	00:00:35
4	Orlando Terranova	PRODRIVE	34:42:55	+01:29:18	00:12:00
5	Jakub Przygonski	MINI	34:59:19	+01:45:42	00:05:00
6	Giniel de Villiers	TOYOTA	35:44:00	+02:30:23	00:15:00
7	Vladimir Vasilyev	BMW	35:56:23	+02:42:46	00:17:00
8	Sebastian Halpern	MINI	36:58:17	+03:44:40	00:17:00
9	Mathieu Serradori	CENTURY	36:58:48	+03:45:11	00:19:00
10	Mattias Ekstrom	AUDI	37:57:45	+04:44:08	00:17:00