“Today we did a good job”

Dakar 2019 | Stage 5 | Tacna > Arequipa
January 11 ^th 2019 - 17:59 [GMT -5]

Even if he lost ten minutes to Sébastien Loeb on the fifth stage, Nasser Al-Attiyah could not hide his satisfaction with having increased his lead over Stéphane Peterhansel. The Toyota driver has completed the first part of the rally at the top of the general standings with a lead of twenty-four minutes over the Dakar’s record holder for victories.

“Seb [Loeb] doesn’t have anything to lose. He needed to go at it, to push and to get back the time. From my side, I need to focus on Stéphane [Peterhansel], because Stéphane will be the danger-man here on the Dakar. Today we did a good job. I think we made a little bit of a big gap and I'm quite happy to finish. Our Toyota and the BF Goodrich tyres are really working well. I’m really happy. [The last part] It was a nightmare, you know. It was difficult. You cannot see. You don't know where you are going. But we tried to manage it a little bit and after Mathieu did a good job”.