After Sainz, Loeb also takes a big hit to his car in what is proving to be one of the toughest Dakar events in recent history
World Rally Championship legend Sebastien Loeb suffered a brutal rollover at the start of Tuesday’s Stage 3 of the 2025 Dakar Rally. Loeb’s Dacia Sandrider landed upside down just 12km into the shortened 327km test between Bisha and Al Henakiyah, leaving him with a severely damaged car. The Frenchman was able to make some quick repairs and resume the stage after losing just eight minutes, but he had to stop again after 63km, ostensibly due to the previous crash.
“We went flat out and all over the place, and in the end we managed to regain the lead,” he explained. “We made up a lot of the lost time and I think we are 14 minutes behind the stage winner, having lost 40 minutes along the way, which is not bad. Yesterday the car started to warm up and we noticed that the front fan was no longer turning. “We started to lose power and crawled as best we could before we lost the rear fan, so there was only one left.
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