Dakar: Sainz claws back in Stage 12

Carlos Sainz grabbed a record-equalling 23rd stage win on the Dakar Rally on Friday, but Volkswagen teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar was poised to comfortably inherit the Spaniard's championship crown.

Sainz, who started the 12th and penultimate stage in third place after a disastrous Thursday where he had lost an hour - and his title - with a broken suspension, came home 2m43s in front of South African teammate Giniel de Villiers.

The latter still holds onto his second overall position but he'll have to make up 48m21s to win the rally, which means that Al-Attiyah will have to suffer a very serious mishap on Saturday's 190km stage for that to fall in place.

Al-Attiyah finished the 555km special from San Juan to Cordoba, which was largely a quagmire following violent overnight storms, 6m11s behind Sainz.

For Sainz it was a sixth stage win of 2011 and 23rd in all, but, barring a major mishap, it will not prevent his Qatari rival, last year's runner-up, from taking the title on Saturday's gentle 181km finale into Buenos Aires.

"It's a very difficult feeling, you know because you need a lot of concentration from the start until the finish," said Al-Attiyah.

"You don't want to make any mistakes. It really was the hardest stage of my life, because I had to keep concentrated and not make any mistakes.

"Sometimes I was going fast, sometimes slow because I needed to keep my concentration and keep the same pace, but it was OK. We finished the stage without any problems and I'm really quite happy."

De Villiers also felt the heat on Stage 12: "The first 220 kilometres just simply refused to end today. To me they seemed incredibly long and hard. There was a lot of mud and sodden tracks, which demanded everything. Today we decided to complete the stage by taking as little risk as possible.

"We caught up with both our teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah as well as Stephane Peterhansel in the X-raid-BMW X3 and the decided to follow them to the finish. This didn't make the job any easier, but it was the best decision in order to complete the job in hand tomorrow, which is what we had in mind: the one-two-three for Volkswagen. "But the 'Dakar' is relentless. We certainly shouldn't underestimate the remaining 180 kilometres. We'll all approach them with respect."

In the motorcycle section, Spanish rider Marc Coma rode his KTM machine to victory to virtually wrap up the 2011 title.

Coma finished 37 seconds ahead of closest rival, and defending champion, Cyril Despres of France on another KTM to boost his overall lead to 16m36s ahead of Saturday's conclusion.

"Today was complicated due to all the rain that fell last night. As a result, it was a very technical stage, like in endurance racing, but it went fine," said Coma, after securing his fifth stage win of this year's event. -IOL & Sapa-AFP

STAGE 12 RESULTS:

CARS:

Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (ESP/Volkswagen) 5h37m18

2. Giniel de Villiers/Dirk Von Zitzewitz (RSA/GER/Volkswagen) +2:43

3. Nasser Al-Attiyah/Timo Gottschalk (QAT/GER Volkswagen) +6:11

4. Stephane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret (FRA/BMW) +6:55

5. Krzysztof Holowczyc/Jean-Marc Fortin (POL/BEL BMW) +13:51

6. Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/RSA/Volkswagen) +16:51

7. Guilherme Spinelli/Youssef Haddad (BRA/Mitsubishi) +25:36

8. Ricardo Leal Dos Santos/Paulo Fiuza (POR/ BMW) +30:10

9. Alfie Cox/Jurgen Schroder (RSA/GER/Nissan) +47:37

10. Matthias Kahle/Thomas Schuenemann (GER/SMG) +48:37.