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Sainz extends Dakar lead

2010 event winner Carlos Sainz remains unbeaten in the 2011 Dakar Rally, having stretched his lead with a win on stage two today

The Volkswagen driver is now 3m05s clear of X-Raid BMW's Stephane Peterhansel in the overall standings, having won today's Cordoba to San Miguel leg by 1m03s.

Sainz's team-mate Nasser Al-Attiyah was second quickest on stage two, with a late charge seeing him snatch the position from Peterhansel by 15 seconds. The result brings Al-Attiyah to within 14s of Peterhansel's second position in the outright results.

While VW still holds three of the top four places with Sainz, Al-Attiyah and Giniel de Villiers, its fourth entry has been hampered by an accident for Mark Miller today. The American lost nearly 50 minutes with both the crash itself and a later stop for further attention, but VW is confident that the damage can be fully repaired for Tuesday, when Miller will resume in 16th place.

Another leading driver in trouble already is Robby Gordon, who was delayed by over half an hour with mechanical issues on his Hummer and is down to 21st.

After his delays on stage one, Guerlain Chicherit had a trouble-free second stage in X-Raid's new Mini and set the seventh-fastest time, bringing him up to 23rd overall.

Stage two results:

Pos  Driver                   Car         Time/Gap
 1.  Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen  3h11m28s
 2.  Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen   + 1m03s
 3.  Stephane Peterhansel     BMW          + 1m34s
 4.  Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen   + 5m43s
 5.  Orlando Terranova        BMW          + 8m14s
 6.  Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW          + 8m57s
 7.  Guerlain Chicherit       Mini        + 11m09s
 8.  Leonid Novitskiy         BMW         + 14m42s
 9.  Ricardo Leal dos Santos  BMW         + 16m42s
10.  Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi  + 17m47s

Overall standings:

Pos  Driver                   Car         Time/Gap
 1.  Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen  5h30m00s
 2.  Stephane Peterhansel     BMW          + 3m05s
 3.  Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen   + 3m19s
 4.  Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen  + 10m49s
 5.  Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW         + 16m04s
 6.  Orlando Terranova        BMW         + 18m25s
 7.  Leonid Novitskiy         BMW         + 28m23s
 8.  Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi  + 29m47s
 9.  Christian Lavieille      Nissan      + 33m32s
10.  Nani Roma                Nissan      + 35m45s

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