Michek again in the top ten, Loprais escapes the box: How did the fifth stage end?

The legendary Dakar Rally continues with the fifth stage and the best of the Czechs is still Aleš Loprais. Martin Michek or Martin Macík also managed to finish in the top ten again. So how are the Czechs doing in the Dakar at the moment?

After his ninth place on Wednesday, Michek repeated his great position today, on Thursday 6.1. During the stage he was rather slightly outside the top ten, but thanks to a great finish he did not lose it.

Michek is now nineteenth in the overall standings, which means he has improved two places. In the motorcycle category, Briton Sunderland is still leading ahead of Walkner and Van Beveren.

however, the 346-kilometre stage was won by Moto GP rider Danilo Petrucci!

“Today’s stage was pretty tough, it had everything the Dakar has to offer. There were rocks on the roads, we rode on the harder pistes, but there were also technical passages. Towards the end we had to cover forty kilometres in the dunes,” said Michek after the finish.

In any case, there were more Czechs in the top ten across the different categories – Josef Machacek finished tenth in the LW Prototype category and is now in fourteenth place overall. Two Czechs were among the top ten in the truck category.

The first is of course Ales Loprais, who finished sixth. About halfway through the stage he was even hovering between second and third place, but in the end he repeated his result from Wednesday. His overall position also remained unchanged, Loprais is still number 5.

But he will have to step it up for the next leg of the Dakar Rally if he is to really attack the podium. He is joined in the elite ten by Macík. However, he lost 27 minutes and eight seconds to the winner of the fifth stage, the Russian Karginov.

South African Lategan did the best in the fifth stage in terms of cars, with Sébastien Loeb again finishing second. However, Nasser al-Attiyah continues to lead the overall standings ahead of Frenchman Loeb. Martin Prokop finished his time in this stage in eighteenth place and is ninth in the standings.

Sources:: Dakar Rally, Motorsport