Nasser Al-Attiyah: “My main target is Sébastien Loeb not Carlos Sainz”

Dakar 2022 | Stage 3 | BISHA > AL HENAKIYAH
January 4 ^th 2022 - 14:43 [GMT + 3]

Al-Attiyah took advantage of Loeb’s mechanical problems to take it easier today.

“I think Seb had a problem with the car and we just tried to take it easy without any risks. I’m quite happy to finish the stage without any problems. This will be good for tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very long stage. I think we need to be really careful on the long stages. Today was a good day for us. I wasn’t surprised to be caught by Carlos because I was going very slowly. It was not a surprise because my main target is Sébastien Loeb not Carlos Sainz. I don’t need to fight with Carlos because he is too far from us. Seb was the main target, but now Seb has a problem. I don’t know how much he has lost. We’re just trying to control the rally. It’s not easy, you know, because now we are on day three and it has happened a lot with many, many drivers, but this is the Dakar and we need to respect the Dakar. We need to be clever and we try to do our best every day because also we have three cars in the Toyota team and they are making mistakes and are too far from the top 5. Tomorrow it won’t be easy to open because it’s the longest stage of the Dakar. Afterwards, we’ll see what we can do”.