By Pablo Elizalde Monday, January 12th 2009, 18:46 GMT
Carlos Sainz stretched his lead at the top of the Dakar standings once again after scoring his fifth stage win of the rally.
The Volkswagen driver has now won three stages in a row to increase his lead at the top of the table to nearly 20 minutes over teammate Mark Miller, who took second place in today's stage.
In one of the longest and hardest specials of the rally at 449 km, Sainz avoided trouble and reached the finish line after nearly six hours of driving.
"This special was very hard," said Sainz. "Very, very, very hard with lots of rocks and with difficult navigation. Really complicated.
"Being here today is a victory. We'll see what happens later, but it was a difficult day."
Miller finished less than two minutes behind, but the American had looked set to win the stage before he was forced to stop to fix his steering and a wheel.
"We have been waiting for a year for this stage," said Miller. "We caught Carlos after 60 kms and we overtook him after around 150. Things were going quite well.
"In the last off-road section Carlos and I were both a little bit... The track was difficult to find and there were big boulders and I hit one on the right, I didn't even see it and it broke the steering so we had to stop and fix the steering and at the same time fix a wheel that broke. But it was a really, really fun day."
Thanks to today's result, Miller moved into second place in the overall standings after a difficult day for Giniel de Villiers, who finished far from his teammates after getting lost around the 80-km mark.
The South African, fourth in the special, dropped 12 minutes and is now nearly 23 behind Sainz in third.
American Robby Gordon was third in the stage after another solid day with his Hummer, ahead of the only works Mitsubishi left, that of Joan Roma.
The Spaniard, a former winner in the bikes category, set the fifth fastest time today, but over 24 minutes adrift of Sainz. Roma is now nearly an hour behind the former rally champion.
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