As he had warned, the French driver saw the 10th stage as decisive and clearly beat the competition.
As happened yesterday, the timed section was shortened from 485 km to 244 km, due to the increase in the flow of a river after CP5, which made it difficult for the pilots to pass.Stéphane Peterhansel gained the advantage right from the start, always controlling the front of the race. In the end, he took the victory with more than 5 minutes ahead of Cyril Despres (Peugeot), who despite his good performance could not keep up with the frenetic pace of his teammate.
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Spaniard Carlos Sainz, who until now had always been constant, had a stage to forget: the driver suffered a gearbox problem on his Peugeot 2008 DKR16, which leaves him out of the race for victory. At the head of the overall standings is Peterhansel, followed by Nasser Al Attiyah (Mini) and Giniel de Villiers (Toyota).
On motorcycles, the Slovakian Štefan Svitko secured his first victory in this edition of the Dakar, with a 2m54s advantage over Kevin Benavides. Portuguese Paulo Gonçalves finished the stage in 4th place.