CRUSHING BLOW OF THE DAY: DE SOULTRAIT TAKES A NOSEDIVE
Xavier de Soultrait, who won the SSV category in 2024, then was hot on the heels of team-mate Brock Heger last year before breaking his front wheel axle unit and seeing the American grab his first triumph, had enjoyed a fine first week on the rally that saw him move into second place again, 20 minutes behind his American colleague’s RZR.
However, a first mishap started to hamper the Frenchman’s progress, when he arrived in Riyadh at the end of a towrope before the rest day. His engine suddenly broke down just after the finishing line of the special, avoiding a catastrophe by a whisker. His team spent the night and most of the day searching for and repairing the problem to avoid a standard engine change which would have entailed a 20-hour penalty.
On tackling the second week of the rally, a strange noise on the link route already had ‘XdS’ worried. The French driver spent the day deprived of four-wheel drive, lost more than 25 minutes and waved goodbye to second place in the overall rankings.
Trailing by almost three quarters of an hour this morning, a prang on the day’s special with Bruno Saby cost him a further forty minutes. This evening, De Soultrait is at the foot of the podium, 1:25’11’’ behind the leader:
“We haven't lost hope for the final podium. We only have two Polaris vehicles left to put on the podium and that's our mission. We have to stop with the bad luck – we've paid our dues to the Dakar, now we just want good things to happen.”
