Dakar Rally 2022, Stage 11: Seth Quintero sets record with 11th victory in light prototype

By Jan 13, 2022, 9:00 AM EST
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Seth Quintero set a Dakar Rally record for victories Thursday by winning Stage 11 of the 2022 event.

The Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team driver won the 501-kilometer loop around Bisha, Saudia Arabia, by more than 15 minutes in his OT3-02, marking his ninth consecutive stage victory in light prototype and 11th overall.

The San Marcos, California, native broke the Dakar single-rally stage win record set by Pierre Lartigue during a 17-stage event in 1994 — more than eight years before Quintero, 19, was born.

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“It’s definitely a rewarding feeling,” Quintero said on the Dakar website. “Every day has just been an adventure in itself and I’ve just been trying to take it day-by-day. (Co-driver and navigator) Dennis (Zenz) has done an absolutely amazing job. I think I’ve been doing OK myself.

“It’s just been quite the adventure. For sure, Stage 2 definitely crosses my mind quite a bit, especially after a race, especially after a win, actually. It always crossed my mind that on Stage 2 if we had 30 less kilometers on that stage, we’d be looking pretty good right now.

Seth Quintero (Red Bull)

After winning the prologue and Stage 1, Quintero’s vehicle suffered a broken differential that left him 16 hours off the overall lead in light prototype. Though it left him out of class title contention, Quintero has won every stage since the mechanical failure, which he credits for changing his mentality and racing with more abandon.

“I could have been driving differently on these last 10 stages, and we might not have got any wins,” Quintero said. “I think it was a blessing in disguise. It took a lot of pressure off us, and I really just had a lot of fun for all the Dakar. We are now the sole record holder for the most stage wins on a single Dakar which is absolutely mind-blowing.

“We came here trying to break the record of being the youngest to ever win a Dakar but in the end we’ve broken another record.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait on the other record, but we’ll be back next year.”

It’s the second consecutive year that Quintero has set a Dakar Rally record. As a rookie last year, the teenager became the youngest stage winner in the endurance race’s 40-year history.

“Hopefully, next year we can break the record of being the youngest ever overall winner,” he said. “We’re just trying to break a few records, I guess.”

Elsewhere in Stage 11 of the 2022 Dakar Rally, which will conclude Friday :

–In the car category, Carlos Sainz notched the second consecutive stage victory for Team Audi (which also took third with Mattias Ekstrom in its electric hybrid).

“I’m happy with this stage,” said Sainz, who was 12th overall after his second stage victory this year. “It was a really difficult stage, and it had everything: camel grass, dunes, dunes, navigation, riverbeds and stones, so it was a really complete stage and quite difficult to open on.”

With a seventh-place finish, three-time Dakar Rally champion Nasser Al-Attiyah continued to hold the overall lead by more than 33 minutes over Sebastien Loeb (who received a time penalty Thursday and placed eighth).

“We are in a good way,” Al-Attiyah said. “Tomorrow is a shorter stage. We just need to continue like this on the same pace. It is very important to win this race.

“It’s been good. From the beginning, we have been leading every day we have been gaining time. To control the Dakar is not easy, but I think we have a lot of experience now and we just need to manage the situation and to finish. You don’t need to win every day. We won on Day 1 and made a good time day by day until the rest day, when we were around forty-five minutes ahead. Now we just need to be really careful all the way, and this is what we’ll do.”

–A day after a mechanical failure ended his hope of defending his 2021 class title, Kevin Benavides won Stage 11 in the bike category.

Sam Sunderland retook the overall class lead while 2020 Dakar Rally bike winner Ricky Brabec finished fifth in the stage to improve to sixth overall, tops among American riders.

–In SSV, Gerard Farres Guell reclaimed first overall from Austin Jones, who battled transmission problems and fell 1 minute, 41 seconds off the lead with a sixth in Stage 11 of the 2022 Dakar Rally after starting with a lead of over 12 minutes.

“This day was definitely the hardest so far,” said Jones, who is trying to become the youngest American to win a Dakar class. “We lost the front diff with about 100 kilometers to go, so we were on two-wheel drive and we had to get out and fix that and then we had to get through all those big dunes. Basically, all the rest of the stuff was two-wheel drive. It wasn’t too easy, but we made it, obviously, and we only gave up however much time we’ve lost. We’re not in a bad spot for the last day, so we’ll see what we can do. Chasing definitely makes it a little bit harder. The Dakar is extremely cruel. We have just got to stay positive. It’s definitely stressful. It’s not a good feeling, but anything can happen, so we’ll see”.

Here are the stage winners and the top three overall in each category after Stage 11 of the 2022 Dakar Rally:

Car

Stage 11 winner: Carlos Sainz (ESP), 3:29:32. Overall: 1. Nasser Al-Attiyah (QAT), Toyota Gazoo Racing, 36:49:51; 2. Sebastien Loeb (FRA), Bahrain Raid Extreme, 37:23:10; 3. Yazeed Al Rajhi (SAU), Overdrive Toyota, 37:53:34.

Bike

Stage 11 winner: Kevin Benavides (ARG), 3:30:56; Overall: 1. Sam Sunderland (GBR), GasGas Factory Racing, 37:04:05; 2. Pablo Quintanilla (CHL), Monster Energy Honda, 37:10:57; 3. Matthias Walkner (AUT), Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, 37:11:20. Other U.S. notables: 6. Ricky Brabec, Monster Energy Honda, 37:41:29; 8. Andrew Short, Monster Energy Yamaha Rally Team, 37:47:45; 9. Mason Klein, BAS Dakar KTM Racing Team, 37:55:14. Withdrew: Skyler Howes, Husqvarna Factory Racing.

Truck

Stage 11 winner: Teruhito Sugawara (JPN), 2:47:40. Overall: 1. Dmitry Sotnikov (RAF), Kamaz-Master 39:54:53; 2. Eduard Nikolaev (RAF), Kamaz-Master, 40:03:11; 3. Anton Shibalov (RAF), Kamaz-Master, 40:59:43.

Light prototype

Stage 11 winner: Seth Quintero (USA), 3:57:53. Overall: 1. Francisco Lopez Contardo (CHL), EKS — South Racing, 43:56:34; 2. Sebastian Eriksson (SWE), EKS — South Racing, 44:52:10; 3. Cristina Gutierrez Herrero (ESP), Red Bull Off-Road Team USA, 48:27:56. Notable: 12. Seth Quintero (USA), Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team USA, 58:40:26.

SSV

Stage 11 winner: Marek Goczal (POL), 4:13:12. Overall: 1. Gerard Farres Guell (ESP), Can-Am Factory South Racing, 45:24:07; 2. Austin Jones (USA), Can-Am Factory South Racing, 45:25:48; 3. Michal Goczal (POL), Cobant-Energylandia Rally Team, 45:42:06.

Quad

Stage 11 winner: Marcelo Medeiros (BRA), 4:53:29. Overall: 1. Alexandre Giroud (FRA), Yamaha Racing – SMX -Drag’on, 47:26:25; 2. Francisco Moreno (ARG), Drag’on Rally Team, 50:07:49; 3. Kamil Wisniewski (POL), Orlen Team, 50:11:20.

PAST RECAPS

DAY 1: Nasser Al-Attiyah takes overall lead as Audi drivers struggle

DAY 2: Sebastien Loeb wins; Austin Jones takes SSV lead

DAY 3: Led by Seth Quintero’s rebound victory, U.S. drivers and riders shine

DAY 4: Overall leader Nasser Al-Attiyah wins stage after penalty

DAY 5: Petrucci becomes first MotoGP veteran to win bike stage at Dakar

DAY 6: Quintero continues impressive win streak in lightweight prototype

DAY 7: Loeb wins in overall; Jones retakes SSV lead

DAY 8: DTM champion Mattias Ekstrom wins first stage

DAY 9: Americans charging as Seth Quintero nears win record

DAY 10: Quintero ties record; Peterhansel wins for Audi

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Roger Penske vows new downtown Detroit GP will be bigger than the Super Bowl for city

By Jun 1, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT
Roger Penske Detroit
David Rodriguez Munoz/USA TODAY Sports Images
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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.

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 19th 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 16th 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.”