While making two course mistakes in Friday's race, Loeb's overall finish dropped to third. But after a rest day of adjustment, BRX Team Loeb easily won the SS7 stage from the special 402 km stage from Riyadh al Dawadimi, returning to second place in the overall ranking.
At the beginning of the race, Loeb had a head-on duel with Audi's former teammate Sainz, trailing only 4 seconds in the first 121 km, and then the race became Loeb's world, the WRC legend driver had difficulty finding opponents on today's high-speed road, and finally defeated Atiyah by 5 minutes and 26 seconds to win the stage. After the game, Loeb said he would have been able to recover more time if there was not a problem in the final stages.
Toyota GAZOO Team's Atiya has a large lead in the overall result, there is no need to choose an aggressive race rhythm, although at one point in the SS7 stage was nearly 7 minutes behind Loeb, but in the final stage it still recovered some time to get the second place in the stage, Atiya continued to top the overall report card, nearly 45 minutes ahead of Loeb.
For the Audi Legion, it was the strongest overall performance since the start of the tournament, with Sainz and Peter Hansel finishing third and fourth respectively, while Mattias Ekstrom finished eighth on the stage. Audi, which has no desire in the overall results, will continue to impact the stage championship in the future.
Behind Audi are three Toyota OVERDRIVE T1+ cars, with Saudi automaker Alaki finishing fifth, Brink and Alvarez finishing sixth and seventh respectively. BRX's Roma and VRT's Vasiliev both made it to the top ten. In the overall ranking, Araji fell one place to temporarily rank third, and teammate Alvarez ranked fourth.
For the Chinese drivers, the Han Wei/Ma Li car group finished 25th in the stage, and teammates Tian Po/Du Xuanyi finished 49th. Han Wei said after the game that he encountered a double test of high temperature and burst in the SS7 stage, and the pilot Marley's ability to correct errors in the game was very strong, and the day's game was both hard and full of fun.
The Beijing off-road team Zhang Guoyu / Pan Hongyu staged a tough overtaking battle at the beginning of the race because of the back of the starting position, and finally won the 42nd place in the stage.
In the motorcycle category, Chinese rider Hazard finished 34th in the stage and temporarily ranked 45th in the overall result. Zhang Min and Zhao Hongyi finished 74th and 77th respectively on the stage.
On 8 January, the SS8 traveled from Al Dawadimi to Wadi Ad Dawasir for a total of 830 km and a special stage of 395 km, the first 200 km of which will be an endless sand dune, the first watershed after the rest day.
Top 12 overall results in the automotive category
Top 12 in the automotive division