Carlos Sainz made history in the 2024 Dakar Rally – by becoming the first driver to take overall victory in an electric vehicle. The Spanish veteran has now won the legendary event four times for four different, having triumphed with
Volkswagen in 2010, Peugeot in 2018 and Mini in 2020 prior to taking the wheel of Audi’s revolutionary RS Q e-tron.
Sainz was aided in his run to the title by team-mates Stéphane Peterhansel and Mattias Ekström, who were going well before dropping out of contention with technical issues on the sixth and seventh stages respectively. With victory out of their reach, both crews got to helping their colleague, Peterhansel stopping for six minutes on Stage 9 to wait for Sainz to pass, so that he could run behind him as a support car.
The value of this could never have been better illustrated than on Stage 10, when Sainz suffered not one but two punctures – a misfortune that would have cost him any chance of the title had it not been for Ekström coming to his rescue and getting him back on his way within a few minutes.
Read the full article in the March issue https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4×4202403
