After the three-time winner Sainz had already lost 31 minutes in the third stage on Tuesday due to navigation difficulties, he continued to slip from the front runners after losing himself on Thursday in the first sections of the fifth stage.
The X-raid Mini driver conceded Giniel de Villiers’ Toyota 28:40 minutes before the first reference at 43 km, with Stephane Peterhansel and Nasser Al-Attiyah also losing time, but with a smaller margin.
Although Sainz managed to regain some of the lost ground on the remaining 400km of the stage between Riyadh and Al Qaisumah, he still crossed the finish line 15:19 minutes behind winner de Villiers and lost over 10 minutes to both Peterhansel and Peterhansel against Al-Attiyah, the two drivers he fights for the overall victory.
With just five of the 12 stages completed, Sainz is already 48:13 minutes behind overall leader Peterhansel, while Al-Attiyah is 42 minutes ahead of the Spaniard in second place.
Upon arriving at the bivouac, a frustrated Sainz said the Dakar felt more like a “gymkhana than a rally” and that he had never seen so many riders go off course due to navigation problems.
“I’m a little demoralized and angry because the rally looks more like a gymkhana than a rally raid,” said the Spaniard. “I’ve been to 14 Dakars and I’ve never lost two days and lost half an hour in each, nor have I seen everyone lost. This is not the Dakar.
“This is going to be more of a gymkhana than a rally. What we’ve seen so far isn’t a rally. I just don’t like it. It’s more of a lottery, something like finding, that’s not really fed up with a rally.
“It’s a gymkhana with navigation. We’ve never had anything like it. Everyone gets lost, everyone tries to find the point. At least I don’t like that.”
The 2021 Dakar Rally is the first in the history of the event where road books are handed out to drivers 15 minutes before the start of each stage instead of the day before.
Since the crews no longer have time to take their own notes, as in the past, the organizer ASO has compensated for this with more details in the road books.
