On Tuesday, the Brazilian led again but ran into problems and finished seventh
Brazilian Lucas Moraes finished Tuesday (16) in third place in the cumulative standings after the first nine days of the Dakar Rally, which is being held in Saudi Arabia and ends next Friday.
The driver, who is navigated by Spaniard Armand Monleón in the Toyota GR DKR Hilux, has the double mission of defending his position and also trying to catch up with the two pairs in front: Spaniards Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (Audi RS Q e-tron E2), who are the leaders of the accumulated result, and second-placed Sebastian Loeb (France)/Fabian Lurquin (Belgium), who are driving a Prodrive Hunter.
Today, after a very strong start in which they led, Moraes and Monleón finished the 417km special between Hail and Al Ula in eighth place. As a result, they lost one minute of their 29-minute lead over the Toyota Hilux Overdrive of Guillaume de Mevius (Belgium)/Xavier Panseri (France), who are in fourth place and also fighting to secure a podium finish.
High mileage:
So far, in nine days, the Dakar has already competed in 3,666km of special stages - timed sections, valid for the race classification with 1,026km still to go in the remaining three days of the race. The total is 4,692km.
"We were going at a good pace, but in the end we got lost and wasted a lot of time, about six minutes, until we found the track again," says Lucas Moraes, who has the support of Red Bull, Repsol, Strava, Oakley and Zapalla and whose team is sponsored by the Brazilian tire brand SpeedMax.
"We don't know what our mistake was - we'll try to identify it in the general meeting we have at the end of the day with the team. We were doing really well, finishing in the top three. But that's part of it. We're happy with our overall position. We're going to do everything we can to hold on to this good result," added the driver.
Of the top five, only Moraes/Monleón and De Mevius/Panseri have yet to win the Dakar. Lucas, for his part, caught the attention of the motorsport world when he made his debut in the famous race last year, already winning a podium - the first for a Brazilian driver in the general classification of the main category, Cars. On January 8, last week, the 33-year-old once again broke a taboo for Brazil: he became the first driver to win a special stage, an extremely difficult feat, as it is equivalent to a race of hundreds of kilometers.
Automatic translation of the Brazilian Portuguese version available on www.todoterreno.pt
Source: BestPR
Photo: Florent Gooden / DPPI / Red Bull Content
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