Spaniards Jose Maria Servia and Oscar Gallardo, who began the day as leaders respectively of the car and motorcycle classes in the Dakar Rally, both fell out of contention during yesterday's seventh stage.
Servia's Schlesser buggy became stuck in the dunes of the Nega desert in Mauritania, while Gallardo took a wrong turn during the 434km timed section of the 625km stage.
The Frenchman, Jean-Louis Schlesser, driving his Schlesser buggy, took the overall lead from his Spanish team-mate Servia.
Another Spaniard, Miguel Prieto, in a Mitsubishi, won the stage which began at Tidjikja, Mauritania and ended at Nioro, in Mali.
He was 12 minutes 46 seconds ahead of Schlesser, who leads overall by just more than 15 minutes from German Jutta Kleinschmidt, also in a Mitsubishi.
In the motorcycle class, Frenchman Richard Sainct snatched the lead from his BMW colleague Servia as Italian Fabrizio Meoni rode his KTM to stage victory.
Sainct came in nearly 10 minutes ahead of Finland's Kari Tiainen, with compatriot Thierry Magnaldi third.
Sainct is almost six minutes clear of Magnaldi in the overall standings. Placings (cars):
1, Miguel Prieto (Spain) Mitsubishi six hours 40min.28sec. 2, Jean-Louis Schlesser (France) Schlesser 12:46 behind. 3, Jutta Kleinschmidt (Germany) Mitsubishi 20:03. 4, Hiroshi Masuoka (Japan) Mitsubishi 26:37. 5, Stephane Peterhansel (France) Nissan 36:40. 6, Kenjiro Shinozuka (Japan) Mitsubishi 1:00:48.
Overall - 1, Schlesser 28hr 44min.32sec. 2, Kleinschmidt 15:07 behind. 3, Prieto 20:03. 4, Masuoka 1-13:28. 5, Shinozuka 1-52:40. 6, Peterhansel 3-13:34.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article