MOTORSPORT: Dakar 'ain't over', vows Toyota's top man

MINI driver Nasser Al-Attiyah has stretched his lead in the Dakar Rally to almost 28½ minutes with three days left, but his main rival in a Toyota HiLux has vowed "it ain't over yet".

Qatari Al-Attiyah's win on the 10th stage, over the Andes Mountains from Calama in Chile to Salta in Argentina, was the sixth day he had been fastest this year, although he was stripped of that honour on the first day for exceeding a speed limit.

Early on the latest stage the field motored from an altitude of 3600 metres up to 4970 metres – almost as high as the base camp on Mt Everest – and then made its way over a course that was rough and extremely narrow in places, with heavy rain restricting visibility and grip towards the end, where they arrived at a flooded service park.

Second-placed South African Giniel De Villiers has been the event's 'Mr Consistent' with two seconds, a third and a fourth the past four years after winning in 2009 – the first Dakar in South America after the switch from Africa because of terror threats.

That victory, like Al-Attiyah's in 2011, was in a Volkswagen Touareg.

De Villiers was only the third-fastest Toyota driver on stage 10, losing more than another four minutes to Al-Attiyah after dropping 15 minutes on the previous stage – the first after the rest day – through a navigation error.

He is now 28 minutes 22 seconds behind the Qatari going into the relatively short (194km) special stage tonight, Australian time, south to Termas de Rio Hondo, home of Argentina's rounds of the World Touring Car Championship and MotoGP.

However, De Villiers is poised to take advantage of any major slip-up by Al-Attiyah, yet said "it makes no sense to take risks" on the remaining three days to the finish at Buenos Aires.

"Nasser's too far ahead ... we [his co-driver is German Dirk von Zitzewitz] won't be able to catch him unless he makes mistakes," De Villiers said.

"But it can happen. Yesterday [the navigation error] was a disappointment, but we still believe in our chances.

"You never know. It ain't over yet.

"Things are good, on balance, because we know we're still in the fight for victory."

De Villiers said the altitude of the Andes was the hardest part of the Dakar.

"It has such an effect on the car," he said.

"At 4500 metres it feels like you've lost more than half the engine.

"I'll give you an example: we're battling to do 120kmh at altitude, whereas at sea level we can do around 190kmh with no problem.

"So the higher we go the more of a disadvantage we face, but we hope to make up that time on the lower bits."

Saudi Arabian rookie Yazeed Al-Rahji remains third in another Toyota, about 15 minutes behind De Villiers after finishing third on stage 10 – behind the MINIs of Al-Attiyah and Argentinean Orlando Terranova and ahead of another South African Toyota driver, Leeroy Poulter and then De Villiers.

The legendary Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, an 11-time Dakar winner (in cars and on bikes), was ninth on the stage in his Peugeot 2008 DKR but remains more than five hours off the lead in 14th position after his delays the previous day.

Peterhansel said stage 10 was "beautiful and quite tricky" but that, while "it looked nice on the surface, there were several traps underneath".

"It reminded me a little bit of a World Rally Championship stage as it was so narrow," he said.

"My biggest problem was our road position: I had to work really hard to make progress from where I started, while not taking unnecessary risks.

"The good news is that we [compatriot Jean-Paul Cottret is his co-driver] are in the top 10 [for the day], so we should have better conditions tomorrow, or at least less worse!

"On the positive side we had no real problems with the car. Perhaps the [two-wheel-drive] set-up was not ideal, but on the whole it was fine."

Czech-born Australian Peter Jerie is 44th outright in his Toyota, while Toby Price – the Australian rookie in the motorcycle category – was fourth among the two-wheelers, continuing a succession of top-five finishes aboard his KTM and standing an amazing fourth overall.

While Al-Attiyah has paced himself beautifully for 10 days he knows he can turn up the pressure – and has promised that he will if need be.

"I'm happy with how things are going," Al-Attiyah said.

"We've been leading the rally since the start in Buenos Aires.

"It's not that easy, but the team's done a great job, including my co-driver Matthieu [Baumel, a Frenchman]."

Al-Attiyah said of the trying conditions as he stormed towards Salta: "This is Dakar. Sometimes you get hot temperatures. Sometimes you get rain and snow.

"But now we're here and we need to carry on at this pace.

"We can only relax once we're in Buenos Aires!"