Frenchman Guerlain Chicherit extended his lead in the Rallye Du Maroc on a day of mixed fortunes for Bahrain Raid Xtreme (BRX) in the penultimate round of the World Rally-Raid Championship.
After another impressive display alongside Alex Winocq in their Prodrive Hunter, Chicherit carries an overall advantage of 9 mins 57 secs from Orly Terranova and his BRX co-driver Alex Haro into tomorrow’s final leg.
Terranova produced another solid drive to set the day’s fourth fastest time. But hopes of a Prodrive Hunter outright 1-2-3 for a third day were disrupted by mechanical issues which dropped his BRX team-mate and world championship leader, Sebastien Loeb, out of contention.
Saudi Arabia’s Yazeed Al Rajhi in a Toyota Hilux was today’s stage winner from Chicherit, although he lies a distant 40 mins 48 seconds off the lead in fourth position.
Qatar’s Nasser Al Attiyah, Loeb’s major rival in the world title race, recorded today’s third fastest time in another Toyota Hilux and is placed third overall. But he lies more than 28 mins away from Chicherit, with a gap of almost 19 mins to Terranova.
Today’s stage was the longest of the rally, and the most spectacular, unwinding across a variety of tracks and mountainous terrain to deliver the survivors to the overnight bivouac in the desert town of Tan-Tan.
Once again it was Chicherit who set off quickest, showing his liking for the Prodrive Hunter and underlining his belief that he can only get faster in a car he is driving competitively for the first time.
After the first 89-km he was 30 seconds ahead of Al Rajhi on the stage, 2 mins 13 secs in front of Al Attiyah, and 4 mins 34 secs ahead of Loeb.
At the 131km point, the Frenchman and the Saudi were locked in a dead heat on the day as Chicherit pursued his double target, to win a first stage and retain his outright lead in the rally.
It was this stage, however, that Loeb ran completely out of luck when he was halted by mechanical issues, while still holding fourth place on the day and was in danger of not finishing the stage.
A fascinating battle for victory on the day continued to the end, meanwhile, with Al Rajhi finally edging Chicherit by 1 min 30 secs. A final stage of 290 kms from Tan-Tan delivers the survivors to the finish in Agadir tomorrow.
Prodrive Hunter driver comments
Guerlain Chicherit; “It was amazing – like it’s a pure Moroccan stage, and really difficult. A lot of rocks, a lot of navigation. It was really tough. We made a big push in the first part until the naturalization and we took more than two minutes on Nasser. For the second part of the stage I decided to slow down a bit to try to avoid any punctures, so we only had one. And that is going to be the tactics again for tomorrow. It’s still a big, big stage and Alex and I still need to do a really good job, because ten minutes can be gone just like that. We must stay focused.”
Orly Terranova; “Not so good, but not so bad. I could have been worse. Like yesterday I had two punctures, and after that I had to be careful. About 40km from the end we could feel the left tyre going down, so we had to stop to repair the slow puncture. But it’s good to be here at the finish.”
