The Dacia Sandriders complete Rallye du Maroc prologue

Rallye du Maroc is under way for The Dacia Sandriders with all three crews completing today’s Prologue, which took place over a 25-kilometre route east of the city of Marrakech.

A precursor to the five timed stages that follow from tomorrow (Monday), the non-competitive section was the perfect opportunity for The Dacia Sandriders to finalise set-up and get their sustainable-fuelled Ultimate category challengers race-ready for the team’s first event.

Starting and finishing at the Grand Stade on the outskirts of Marrakech, the Prologue featured a predominantly gravel surface with some sand and soil sections.

Nasser Al-Attiyah, who is chasing a sixth FIA world championship crown in Morocco, and co-driver Edouard Boulanger were the first crew to tackle the Prologue and completed the route in a time of 18m48.7s.

While it was a trouble-free run for Al-Attiyah and Boulanger, Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin suffered a challenging start to Rallye du Maroc after they got stuck in a ditch and needed the help of another competitor to reach the finish, albeit with damage to a suspension component.

Running 16th on the road, there were no such problems for Cristina Gutiérrez and Pablo Moreno, who set the sixth fastest time among the Ultimate category contenders in sixth overall, a 17m44.0s, which was some 22 minutes ahead of team-mates Loeb and Lurquin.

The Dacia Sandriders are now transferring 372 kilometres to Zagora to the southeast of Marrakech ahead of Stage 1 on Monday (October 7)

KEY QUOTES
NASSER AL-ATTIYAH (QATAR), DRIVER, THE DACIA SANDRIDERS : « We tried to make a good, clean run without any mistakes. We lose a little bit of time to start behind for tomorrow, but it looks like everybody was doing the same strategy. It’s not enough what we did but I’m really happy with the performance of the car. Even if we start first on the Prologue today, the car was working very well, but we will see tomorrow because it’s a long day. »

CRISTINA GUTIÉRREZ (SPAIN), DRIVER, THE DACIA SANDRIDERS : « I’m happy. We know we are learning in the first race, but we felt okay in the car and the car felt super-nice to drive. The Prologue was super-tricky with a lot of difficult places so we kept calm in some moments because you can lose more than you can win. We were quite happy at the finish because I did not expect to finish in this position. But the rally will be long and hard and we need to go day by day. »

SÉBASTIEN LOEB (FRANCE), DRIVER, THE DACIA SANDRIDERS : « In a tricky section we should stay more on the right, but Fabian didn’t have time to tell me everything because there was a lot of notes one after the other. I went very slow but we fall in a ditch. We were lucky that one of our team-mates from last year, Marcos Baumgart and Kleber Cincea, helped us out but we had a broken wishbone and we had to go very slow to finish the stage. Luckily for us the Prologue doesn’t count in the classification and we are still here. The road position will be a bit different than the others tomorrow but we will start tomorrow and try to do better than today. »

RALLYE DU MAROC PROLOGUE RESULTS (UNOFFICIAL) – Marrakech-Marrakech
Stage distance: 25km Liaison distance: 49km Total distance: 74km
6th: Cristina Gutiérrez (ESP)/Pablo Moreno (ESP), 17m44.0s
31st: Nasser Al-Attiyah (QAT)/Edouard Boulanger (FRA), 18m48.7s
109th: Sébastien Loeb (FRA)/Fabian Lurquin (BEL), 40m03.3s

RALLYE DU MAROC: THE BIG NUMBER
17m44.0s: It took Cristina Gutiérrez and Pablo Moreno 17m44.0s to complete the Prologue for Rallye du Maroc, the deciding round of the 2024 FIA World Rally-Raid Championship.

THE DAY AHEAD: Following today’s Prologue, the timed action begins tomorrow (Monday) with Stage 1 starting and finishing in Zagora. Stage distance: 268km
Liaison distance: 228km Total distance: 496km

Linda Martins,

PUBLICITÉ