Al-Attiyah Wins Stage Eleven

The overall class leads stayed the same across the board after stage eleven of the 2016 Dakar Rally.

Nasser Al-Attiyah won his second stage of this year's race. Both have come after the rest day. The Qatari beat Sébastien Loeb by five minutes and 52 seconds with Mikko Hirvonen finishing third, seven minutes and a second back. Stéphane Peterhansel was fourth on the stage, eight minutes and five seconds behind Al-Attiyah. Fifth on the stage was Yazeed Al-Rajhi, 11 minutes and 57 second behind Al-Attiyah. Nani Roma finished 12 minutes and 14 seconds back in sixth with Giniel de Villiers 44 seconds behind Roma. Cyril Despres finished eighth, 14 minutes and 51 seconds back. Toyota drivers Leeroy Poulter and Vladimir Vasilyev rounded out the top ten, both finished over 20 minutes back. Robby Gordon was 11th, over 22 minutes back.

Peterhansel still leads overall but the gap to Al-Attiyah has dropped to 51 minutes. An hour and 17 minutes back is de Villiers. Hirvonen is just over five minutes behind the South African. Poulter trails Hirvonen by 24 minutes. Roma and Despres are the final two drivers within two hours of Peterhansel, an hour and 54 minutes and an hour and 56 minutes respectively. Vasilyev is two hours and 11 minutes back. Loeb trails by two hours and 25 minutes. Harry Hunt is tenth, two hours and 48 minutes back.

Gordon is over ten hours back in 28th.

Carlos Sainz has retired after a mechanical failure on stage ten. American Sheldon Creed was disqualified from the race after stage nine for skipping waypoints.

Antoine Meo picked up his second stage victory in the bike class. The Frenchman defeated class leader Toby Price by 18 seconds. Pablo Quintanilla finished third, two minutes and 48 seconds. Hélder Rodrigues was fourth, six minutes and two seconds behind Meo. Adrien Van Beveren finished sixth, 12 minutes and nine seconds back. Kevin Benavides finished four seconds back of Van Beveren. Štefan Svitko finished 26 seconds behind Benavides. American Ian Blythe was the surprise of the stage, finishing eighth, 21 minutes and 28 seconds back. Jordi Viladoms finished ninth, 25 minutes and 29 seconds back and Gerard Farres rounded out the top ten, 27 minutes and seven seconds back. Ricky Brabec finished less than a minute outside the top ten in 11th on stage eleven.

Price leads Svitko by over 35 minutes. Meo is now third, 43 minutes back and Quintanilla trails Meo by less than two minutes. Benavides is 57 minutes back in fifth. Rodrigues is an hour and two minutes back. An hour and 33 minutes back is Van Beveren with Brabec just over six minutes behind the Frenchman. Farres is an hour and 41 minutes back. Michael Metge is 10th, over three hours back.

Alejandro Patronelli won his first stage of this year's Dakar by a minute and six seconds over stage ten winner Brian Baragwanath. Marcos Patronelli was twenty seconds behind Baragwanath in third. Sergei Karyakin finished fourth, 17 minutes and 49 seconds back. Jeremias González was fifth, 28 minutes and 56 seconds back.

Eight seconds separate the Patronelli brothers entering the penultimate stage. Marcos leads Alejandro. Baragwanath is an hour and 41 minutes back in third. Karaykin trails by an hour and 51 minutes and González is two hours and two minutes back in fifth.

Eduard Nikolaev won his third stage in the truck class by seven minutes and two seconds over Hans Stacey. Ton Van Genugten was 34 seconds behind Stacey in third. Airat Mardeev finished fourth, seven minutes and 51 seconds behind his fellow Russian. In fifth was Dmitri Sotnikov, nine minutes and 38 seconds back. Overall leader Gerard de Rooy finished 13 minutes and 49 seconds back in sixth.

De Rooy leads overall by an hour and nine minutes over Mardeev. Federico Villagra finished ninth on the stage and is third in the truck class, an hour and 45 minutes back, Van Genugten trails by two hours and 10 minutes in fourth. Stacey is just over two and a half hours back in fifth.

The penultimate stage heads from San Juan to Villa Carlos Paz.