Dakar Stage 9 Highlights: Al-Attiyah, Price close in on victory - MotorSportsTalk

As the rally winds down, leaders Nasser Al-Attiyah in cars and Toby Price in motorcycles are one strong stage away from class victories in the 2019 Dakar Rally.

Stephane Peterhansel retired from the rally 26 kilometers into Stage 8 when his navigator David Castera hurt his back. It is the first time in 10 years that Peterhansel has retired and only the fourth time in 31 years.

Here are some of the other highlights:

In the cars class, Nasser Al-Attiyah all but sealed his third Dakar Rally victory with a stage win. He padded his lead by nearly five minutes and leads the field by 51 minutes. … Nani Roma finished second on the stage. … Giniel de Villiers scored his first podium finish of the rally in third. … Sebastien Loeb entered the stage as one of two drivers who could possibly challenge Al-Attiyah, but a broken transmission removed that potential. … Cyril Despres was 20 kilometers away from the stage win until he rolled his car near the end. He finished eighth, 39 minutes behind.

“I think we were doing a really good stage, pushing hard from the start, but at kilometer 250 or something like this we had a broken transmission,” Loeb said at Dakar.com. “We had to change it, it’s quite tough to do, but we have a spare one, so we changed it. Maybe we made a little mistake, we lost a lot of time trying to put a clips. Finally, we decided to go like this and it broke again, so we had to wait for Pierre [Lachaume] to give us his spare transmission. We changed it again, [it took] a long time and now we’re here. That’s just the way it is.

Class Leaders: Al-Attiyah holds an advantage of 51:27 over Roma and two hour, 02:37 over Loeb.

In motorcycles, Michael Metge became the seventh different rider to win one of the first nine stages. … Daniel Nosiglia Jager also stood on the podium for the first time in 2019; previously, his best performance was 13th in Stage 8. … Pablo Quintanilla rounded out the top three. … Toby Price finished fifth and maintained the class lead.

Class Leaders: Price holds a narrow advantage over Quintanilla by 1:02 and 6:35 over Matthias Walkner.

In side by sides, Reinaldo Varela his second stage win – having waited since Stage 1 to get it. … Gerard Farres Guell finished second to stand on the podium six times this year. … Class leader Francisco Lopez Contardo rounded out the top three.

Class Leaders: Contardo holds an advantage 0f 59:46 over Guell and one hour, 11:29 over Varela

In quads, With his eighth win in nine stages, Nicolas Cavigliasso remains untouchable in class. … Maneul Andujar finished just four minutes back in second. … Gustavo Gallego rounded out the top three.

Class Leaders:
Cavigliasso holds and advantage of one hour, 49:24 over Ferioli and two hours, 4:33 over Gallego

In trucks, After winning back to back stages to lead the rally, Eduard Nikolaev had to wait a long time to earn his third stage win. … He outpace Siarhei Viazovich and Dmitry Sotnikov, who entered the stage with the class lead. … Nikolaev regained the class lead with this performance.

Class Leaders: Nikolaev holds and advantage of 28:35 over Sotnikov and and one hour, 35:10 over Gerard de Rooy

Stage Wins

Motorcycles
Sam Sunderland [2] (Stage 5 and 7), Matthias Walkner [2] (Stage 2 and 8), Joan Barreda [1] (Stage 1), Xavier de Soultrait [1] (Stage 3), Ricky Brabec [1] (Stage 4), Pablo Quintanilla [1] (Stage 6) and Michael Metge [1] Stage 9

Quads
Nicolas Cavigliasso [8] (Stage 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9) and Jeremias Gonzalez Ferioli [1] (Stage 3)

Cars
Sebastien Loeb [4] (Stage 2, 5, 6 and 8), Nasser Al-Attiyah [3] (Stage 1, 4 and 9) and Stephane Peterhansel [2] (Stage 3 and 7)

Side-by-sides
Francisco Lopez Contardo [4] (Stage 2, 6, 7 and 8), Reinaldo Varela [2] (Stage 1 and 9), Gerard Farres Guell [1] (Stage 3), Sergei Kariakin [1] (Stage 4) and Rodrigo Piazzoli [1] (Stage 5)

Trucks
Eduard Nikolaev [4] (Stage 1, 2, 5 and 9), Andrey Karginov [2] (Stage 3 and 4), Dmitry Sotnikov [2] (Stage 6 and 8) and Gerard de Rooy [1] (Stage 7)

For more watch the daily highlight show on NBCSN. Click here for the complete schedule.

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DETROIT – He helped spearhead bringing the town a Super Bowl 17 years ago, but Roger Penske believes the reimagined Chevrolet Detroit GP is his greatest gift to the Motor City.

“It’s bigger than the Super Bowl from an impact within the city,” Penske told NBC Sports. “Maybe not with the sponsors and TV, but for the city of Detroit, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.

“We’ve got to give back individually and collectively, and I think we as a company in Michigan and in Detroit, it’s something we know how to do. It shows we’re committed. Someone needs to take that flag and run it down through town. And that’s what we’re trying to do as a company. We’re trying to give back to the city.”

After 30 years of being run on Belle Isle, the race course has been moved to a new nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout that will be the centerpiece of an event weekend that is designed to promote a festival and community atmosphere.

There will be concerts in the adjacent Hart Plaza. Local businesses from Detroit’s seven districts have been invited to hawk their wares to new clientele. Boys and Girls Clubs from the city have designed murals that will line the track’s walls with images of diversity, inclusion and what Detroit means through the eyes of youth.

And in the biggest show of altruism, more than half the circuit will be open for free admission. The track is building 4-foot viewing platforms that can hold 150 people for watching the long Jefferson Avenue straightaway and other sections of the track.

We are live on pit lane this morning revving up for #DetroitGP with ⁦@CBSDetroit⁩! pic.twitter.com/FJScKXqsS0

— Detroit Grand Prix (@detroitgp) June 1, 2023

Detroit GP chairman Bud Denker, a longtime key lieutenant across Penske’s various companies, has overseen more than $20 million invested in infrastructure.

The race is essentially Penske’s love letter to the city where he made much of his fame as one of Detroit’s most famous automotive icons, both as a captain of industry with a global dealership network and as a racing magnate (who just won his record 19^th Indy 500 with Josef Newgarden breaking through for his first victory on the Brickyard oval).

During six decades in racing, Penske, 86, also has run many racetracks (most notably Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also speedways in Michigan, California and Pennsylvania), and much of that expertise has been applied in Detroit.

“And then the ability for us to reach out to our sponsor base, and then the business community, which Bud is tied in with the key executives in the city of Detroit, bringing them all together,” Penske said. “It makes a big difference.

“The Super Bowl is really about the people that fly in for the Super Bowl. It’s a big corporate event, and the tickets are expensive. And the TV is obviously the best in the world. What we’ve done is taken that same playbook but made it important to everyone in Detroit. Anyone that wants to can come to the race for free, can stand on a platform or they can buy a ticket and sit in the grandstands or be in a suite. It’s really multiple choice, but it is giving it to the city of Detroit. I think it’s important when you think of these big cities across the country today that are having a lot of these issues.”

Denker said the Detroit Grand Prix is hoping for “an amazingly attended event” but is unsure of crowd estimates with much of the track offering free viewing. The race easily could handle a crowd of at least 50,000 daily (which is what the Movement Music Festival draws in Hart Plaza) and probably tens of thousands more in a sprawling track footprint along the city’s riverwalk.

Penske is hoping for a larger crowd than Belle Isle, which was limited to about 30,000 fans daily because of off-site parking and restricted fan access at a track that was located in a public park.

The downtown course will have some unique features, including a “split” pit lane on an all-new concrete (part of $15 million spent on resurfaced roads, new barriers and catchfencing … as well as 252 manhole covers that were welded down).

A $5 million, 80,000-square-foot hospitality chalet will be located adjacent to the paddock and pit area. The two-story structure, which was imported from the 16^th hole of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, will offer 70 chalets (up from 23 suites at Belle Isle last year). It was built by InProduction, the same company that installed the popular HyVee-branded grandstands and suites at Iowa Speedway last year.

Penske said the state, city, county and General Motors each owned parts of the track, and their cooperation was needed to move streetlights and in changing apexes of corners. Denker has spent the past 18 months meeting with city council members who represent Detroit’s seven districts, along with Mayor Mike Duggan. Penske said the local support could include an appearance by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer.

Denker and Detroit GP president Michael Montri were inspired to move the Detroit course downtown after attending the inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We saw what an impact it made on that city in August of 2021 and we came back from there and said boy could it ever work to bring it downtown in Detroit again,” Denker said. “We’ve really involved the whole community of Detroit, and the idea of bringing our city together is what the mayor and city council and our governor are so excited about. The dream we have is now coming to fruition.

“When you see the infrastructure downtown and the bridges over the roads we’ve built and the graphics, and everything is centered around the Renaissance Center as your backdrop, it’s just amazing.”