Mexico, April 28 (BNA): With the World Rally Championship’s lead approaching, the Bahrain Raid Xtreme team was denied victory in the return stage in Mexico, as Nasser Al-Attiyah continued his progress in the Sonora Rally.
After Sébastien Loeb had retired 24 hours earlier in his BRX Prodrive Hunter, his French teammates Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq were heading for an impressive win on the penultimate stage of the race before they stopped with an electrical problem.
There was no stopping Marcus Baumgart and Kleber Sencia in another Prodrive Hunters game, as the WRRC debutants posted an impressive third-fastest time of the day to finish fifth overall, despite a three-minute penalty.
Making it a good day throughout the day for partner BRX Brazillian team Christian Baumgart and Alberto Andreotti took Prodrive Hunter to eighth on the day and eighth overall.
And since he only needed to finish the race to replace Loeb as championship leader, Al-Attiyah’s convincing stage victory from Yazid Al-Rajhi in another Toyota extended his outright lead over the Saudi driver to 7 minutes and 22 seconds.
While the BRX technicians fixed the Prodrive Hunter to ensure it would restart on the final 139km stage from Benasco to San Luis, Chicheret said: “Like every stage this week I’ve been going really well.
“The pace was good today as before it was very weak in the back, so we went back to the settings we had in Morocco last year when I was really happy and you immediately got my confidence back.
“We were going at the right pace without going crazy to catch Nasir, but this alternator problem came up. We shut down everything to try and save it but it stopped after a while; real shame but we’ll be back fighting again.”
“We’re getting close to the limit for the car,” said Marcus Baumgart. “We’re still holding back a little bit from what it’s going to do in the end, but we’re very happy with this stage and the third place behind the world champion.”
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