Serradori surprises with Dakar stage 10 win as Al Attiyah stretches overall lead

Mathieu Serradori sprang a surprise in today's 10th stage of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia, a 420 km special to Bisha. The Frenchman, driving a Century Racing C7, bested overall leader Nasser Al Attiyah by over six minutes to rocket up four places in the standings to fifth. But he's still 33 minutes from the Qatari, whose grip on the overall lead tightened.

Al Attiyah, who stamped his authority on the dunes, stretched his lead from the 1m10s that separated the provisional top 3 yesterday into a 12-minute gap over the Dacia Sunriders driver's closest rival, Henk Lategan, who ran out of fuel and made a navigation blunder with his Toyota, and 12m50s over Ford's Nani Roma, who also reported losing around eight minutes looking for a waypoint.

"We hardly left anything on the track today!" enthused Serradori. "I was mad this morning and we went a bit too fast in the first 30 kilometers. [My navigator] told me to calm down or risk disaster; he was right to do so. I needed this one, it makes me really happy. We won the Dakar two-wheel-drive ranking three times and today we proved Century can put together a competitive, reliable car. It's Christmas come early – it's awesome."

The podium is back within reach for the second Dacia Sandrider, Sebastien Loeb, who moved up to fourth place, 23 minutes behind his leading teammate, after the Fords of Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekstrom ran into their own delays.

While the overall lead grew in the Ultimate ranks, it was all change in the motorcycles. Daniel Sanders and his KTM started the day more than six minutes ahead of Monster Energy Honda's Ricky Brabec at the top of the order, but that all went down the drain when he crashed and hurt his left shoulder 138 km into the special. The Australian soldiered on to the finish but lost nearly half an hour. Brabec's second place on the stage to teammate Adrien Van Beveren puts the American 56s ahead of Luciano Benavides, who now appears to be KTM's best hope for victory after Sanders slipped to fourth behind another Brabec teammate, Tosha Schareina.

"It wasn't that complicated, just a lot of dunes over the first 240 km," said Brabec, who has been the only rider to remain on the overall podium since the start. "We were opening the special, so it wasn't easy to attack. Luciano had a better position, but I picked up some bonuses. Daniel had a big crash; we stopped for a few minutes with Tosha, and we'll get some time back. I think we're still in a good position to push tomorrow. I would've preferred to start further back, but today we gained bonuses, and I think I did a good job."

Brock Heger scooped up his fourth special since the start in Yanbu and built up his lead in the SSV race, which he has held since stage 3. The American reigning champion's consistency with his RZR s remarkable and he has has more than an hour in hand over his countryman Kyle Chaney and an extra 20 minutes over Xavier de Soultrait.

"Overall, I'm really happy to have done well once again. We had a blast today," said Heger. "Xavier, my teammate, I think he is just behind me, and we rode together with Johan Kristoffersson in the dunes. It was really fun.

"I'm pleased with my position and looking forward to washing our gear and taking a shower. It's not over until it's over. We'll give it our best and see where that takes us at the line."

The all-Defender battle in the Stock class continued with Rokas Baciuska once again winning ahead of teammates Sara Price and Stephane Peterhansel. The Lithuanian's overall class lead over America's Price now is now a massive 3h29m.