Loeb next to suffer rollover in merciless Dakar Rally

World Rally Championship legend Sebastien Loeb suffered a brutal rollover firstly of Tuesday’s Stage 3 of the 2025 Dakar Rally.

Loeb’s Dacia Sandrider landed the wrong way up simply 12km into the shortened 327km take a look at between Bisha and Al Henakiyah, leaving him with a severely broken automotive.

The Frenchman was capable of make some fast repairs and resume the stage after dropping simply eight minutes, however he needed to cease once more after 63km, ostensibly because of the earlier crash.

Loeb’s troubles on Stage 3 have dealt an additional blow to his hopes of successful Dakar for the primary time, having already fared poorly within the opening levels of the 2025 occasion.

A variety of points, together with a mechanical downside with the followers on his Dacia, had left him in sixth place going into Tuesday’s working, virtually 19 minutes down on standings chief Henk Lategan of Toyota. Loeb’s team-mate Cristina Gutierrez needed to sacrifice her personal outing with a purpose to assist him attain the bivouac.

The 50-year-old described the second take a look at in Bisha like an prolonged WRC rally, such was the depth of the 48-hour marathon stage.

 “We did not count on a lot,” he stated. “Yesterday [Sunday] we had given up, we could not make any extra progress and we had already misplaced 40 minutes. We did 900 kilometres of WRC whereas the automotive labored.

“We went flat out and far and wide, and in the long run, we managed to regain the lead,” he defined. “We made up numerous the misplaced time and I feel we’re 14 minutes behind the stage winner, having misplaced 40 minutes alongside the way in which, which isn’t dangerous. Yesterday the automotive began to heat up and we observed that the entrance fan was not turning.

“We began to lose energy and crawled as finest we might earlier than we misplaced the rear fan, so there was just one left.

“We had been going 30km/h after we misplaced the third fan, and the automotive got here to an entire cease. We needed to watch for it to chill down earlier than we might restart it, we recovered a fan and went to the refuelling like this, ready on the prime of every dune for it to chill down earlier than climbing the dune in entrance of us.

“And unexpectedly, the fan began working once more. Pablo [Moreno] and Cristina [Gutierrez] arrived and helped us, particularly Pablo who is an effective mechanic. 

“They gave us a relay that we had already modified, and because of him for that fan, and by likelihood for the others, it began working once more, and since then it has been going full steam forward. It is an issue we have had since July and it is what I used to be most frightened about once I got here; I hope it really works.”