Rally Kazakhstan: Al Attiyah extends lead as Al Rajhi rolls

Nasser Al Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel continue to head the Rally Kazakhstan leaderboard, another stage win giving them an impressive 11 minute and 55 second advantage.

Bernhard Ten Brinke and Tom Colsoul have moved up into second and are in a close battle with Jakub Przygonski and Timo Gottschalk, the crews split by just 27 seconds after over nine hours of competition.

Today’s 327.47 kilometre selective section provided another fresh challenge for the crews as they headed into the Mangystau region to the east of Kenderly. Al Attiyah once again opened the road and the Qatari racked up his third consecutive stage win in the Toyota Hilux Overdrive.

“It was not an easy stage, very different to the last two days and more technical,” he said. “I was quite happy to be pushing hard, but as first car made two or three mistakes finding the road.”

Ten Brinke set another top time, the Dutchman second fastest and three minutes 36 seconds down on the benchmark set by Al Attiyah. He and co-driver Tom Colsoul have powered up to second from fourth last night, despite stopping with a slow puncture.

“The stage was good but the dunes at the start were a little rough and there was a lot of camel grass,” said the Hilux Overdrive driver. “The driving was good, we had a clean run on the rocky pistes and Tom did a good job.”

Przygonski had a slow start in the dunes and completed the section in third, but the Polish reigning World Cup champion has dropped a position to third today, albeit only 27 seconds adrift of Ten Brinke. “We were a bit too slow in the sand at the start,” he said. “We had one puncture but gained time in the last section on the fast tracks.”

Stéphane and Andrea Peterhansel have moved up the leaderboard courtesy of Al Rajhi’s time loss. “The stage was more technical today, but it was all ok for us,” said the Frenchman who finished fourth and overnights in the same position.

“We had to stop once to clean the windscreen; with the wipers it was making a real mess. A few kilometres before the end I made a mistake with the navigation because I thought I knew where we were going; I should have listened to Andrea!”

Miroslav Zapletal and Marek Sykora have climbed to fifth in their Ford F-150 Evo and they have a comfortable lead over the Russian MINI crew of Denis Krotov/Dmytro Tsyro. Having rolled out of third position and dropped over an hour into seventh, Yazeed Al Rajhi said: “We pushed, and 30 kilometres into the section passed Peterhansel. We then passed Przygonski at 60 kilometres to follow Ten Brinke. Then on a tight corner the wheels went into a ditch and we rolled.” Both Al Rajhi and co-driver Dirk Von Zitzewitz were unhurt in the incident.

Andrey Cherednikov and Ignat Falkov continue to uphold honours for Kazakhstan and hold eighth position ahead of the Turkmenistan crew of Gurbanberdi Danatarov/Rafael Gaynulin. Reinaldo Varela and Gustavo Gugelmin missed out on a third consecutive stage win in the T3 category but continue to lead and are 10th in the overall classification. Mohammed Al Meer and Alexey Kuzmich maintain their T2 advantage at the mid-point of the rally.

The fourth leg of Rally Kazakhstan, the third event in the FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rallies, is the second longest competitively and covers a 399.24 kilometre section which takes the crews back to the bivouac in Aktau for the remainder of the event.

Reinaldo Varela/Gustavo Gugelmin continue to head the T3 category

Rally Kazakhstan – Provisional results after Leg 3 (18:30 hrs local)