The bad weather that saw stage five of the Dakar Rally to be shortened has continued overnight and has seen the cancellation of the sixth stage on Saturday.
A rainstorm around Oruro had made some of the tracks impossible to navigate, and organisers have decided to cancel the 786-kilometre stage from Oruro to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, which was to include a timed section of 527 kilometres.
The competitors now will effectively have a two-day rest with Sunday already being scheduled as a rest day, with the running set to resume on Monday with a 622-kilometre stage from La Paz to Uyuni, with 322 kilometres being timed.
Peugeot currently lead the way in the car category with Stephane Peterhansel, Sebastien Loeb and Cyril Despres making it a 1-2-3 for the French manufacturer, while Sam Sunderland leads the bike classification for KTM by twelve minutes from Husqvarna’s Pablo Quintanilla, with Yamaha’s Adrian van Beveren third.
Gerard de Rooy is in the lead of the trucks class in his Iveco followed by a trio of Kamaz drivers, Eduard Nikolaev, Dmitry Sotnikov and Ayrat Mardeev.
Simon Vitse takes an 8 minute and 14 second lead into stage seven in the quad classification, with the Frenchman the leader of a quartet of Yamaha drivers at the front of the field ahead of Sergey Karyakin, Axel Dutrie and Ignacio Casale.
Brazilian Leandro Torres heads the UTV class for Polaris by more than 2 hours and 34 minutes from Mao Ruijin of China, while another driver from China, Li Dongsheng sits third.
