2019 Dakar Rally Stage 5 took place on Friday January 11. Stage 5 was a total of 776 km, and the second of the two marathon timed sections. On both stages, teams had to compete without any outside help. The cars were stationed at a different overnight camp to their crews and could only be serviced by their driving pairs and team-mates.

Click here for the stage four results.

Consolidation

Before setting off on stage 5 the Toyota Team, with South African Giniel de Villiers, had one focus to protect their team-mate and race leader, Nasser Al-Attiyah. De Villiers started 25th and had to pass many slower vehicles and contend with poor visibility caused by dust all day.

On the charge

Elsewhere in the field drivers further back were throwing caution to the wind. During stage 5 there was one man setting the timing screens alight all day: Sebastien Loeb. At every checkpoint, the Frenchman seemed to get further ahead from the chasing pack and would eventually claim the stage 5 win by a full 10 minutes. Second place was race leader Al-Attiyah. The Toyota Hilux driver seemed to take a more cautious approach as he has the race lead to consider.

Despite chasing hard early on in the stage, Stephane Peterhansel lost time late in the day to race leader Al-Attiyah. It was Nani Roma who finished third on the day. Al-Attiyah still leads the overall classification in the cars division.

Saturday is a rest day at the 2019 Dakar Rally. Racing resumes on Sunday afternoon South African time.

Check out the official Dakar YouTube channel for a video review of the day.

1 Nasser Al-Attiyah/Mathieu Baumel Toyota 17 hr 19 min 53 sec

2 Stephane Peterhansel/David Castera Mini +24 min 42 sec

3 Nani Roma/Alex Haro Bravo Mini +34 min 33 sec

4 Jakub Przygonski/Tom Colsoul Orlen X-Raid Team +38 min 12 sec

5 Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena PH Peugeot +40 min 00 sec