Nasser Al Attiyah: “I think we are in a good way”

Dakar 2022 | Stage 6 | SHUBAYTAH > SHUBAYTAH
January 7 ^th 2022 - 14:06 [GMT + 3]

The Toyota team leader has reached the rest day on top of the general rankings, with a lead of 50 minutes over Yazeed Al Rajhi and Sébastien Loeb, his two nearest pursuers, who are neck and neck.

“Absolutely, we are quite happy today. We tried to push from the beginning, but some drivers made some mistakes. Mathieu navigated well and we drove all the stage without any problems. We are quite happy to have finished the first week of the Dakar with a good lead. I saw that some drivers had gone too far right, but that was not our problem. Mathieu did a good job, he was really careful to avoid making any mistakes. I think we are in a good way. We are quite happy. We’ve worked a lot this week, without any mistakes. The car is working very well. This is the Dakar and we will try to manage next week without any risks. For victory, it is difficult to say – the Dakar is the Dakar, but we need to be careful and we need to be strong all the way. We need to have a good pace without any relaxing because when you relax you make a mistake. We need to navigate well and we are learning a lot, me and Mathieu. We need to go at high speed, like today when we did a good job and everybody followed us over the last 100 km. We tried to make a good day of it”.