Al-Attiyah takes big step to victory at Dakar

Nasser-Alttiyah has moved closer to his dream of winning his first Rally Dakar has he won yesterday's stage and his team-mate Carlos Sainz had technical problems and lost a huge amount of time.

In yesterday's stage the Spaniars who was in second in the overall standings after the last stage had another nightmare day, braking his suspension over the 410 kilometres of the stage.

Thanks to the mechanical problem and more than an hour of lost time Carlos Sainz has dropped to third in the overall standings and is now trailing behind Al-Attiyah and Giniel de Villiers.

"I pushed as hard as I could and when I was in Nasser's dust, I didn't see a hole," said Sainz. "I went straight into it and broke the suspension.

"I tried everything I could to go on the attack, because I haven't come here to finish second. For me it's first or nothing, so finishing second or third is the same."

"Today we had a good start. We just stayed behind 'Peter'. Everything was okay, the car worked very well and there were no problems. There was a lot of dust on the stage, but the good thing is that we finished and we'll see what we can do tomorrow," said Al-Attiyah.

"Tomorrow will be a different day as well. I don't know what happened to Carlos. I hope he can fix his wheel. Today I think Carlos was pushing a lot. From my side I'm really happy, I did a very good job and so did my co-pilot and the team.

Al-Attiyah won the 11th stage of the Dakar Rally ahead of BMW's Stephane Peterhansel, with Volkswagen's Giniel de Villiers coming in third.

In the bikes Cyril Despres recovered 2m11s of time to his team-mate Marc Coma after he won the 11th leg of the Dakar. The Frenchman is still fighting for top position with the Spaniard although he still almost 16 minutes behind Coma.

The two KTM riders have been fighting for this year's Dakar title over the two weeks of the race and have a comfortable lead over third place Chilean Francisco Lopez Contardo.