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Al-Attiyah takes first stage win

Nasser Al-Attiyah won his first stage of this year's Dakar Rally on Tuesday, though his Volkswagen team-mate Carlos Sainz still holds the event's overall lead

Al-Attiyah had started the day third, also trailing Stephane Peterhansel's BMW, but quickly caught Sainz and trailed the Spaniard home to record a 25-second advantage and his ninth career Dakar stage win.

But the Qatari was not content with the stage victory, complaining about a loss of engine power during the day.

"I'm very disappointed," he said. "We had exactly the same problem as yesterday. We completely lost power after 200km. I don't know why. That's three days the same thing has happened.

"I gained 1m30 on Carlos in the first part, but I lost my lead on the technical section where you must always use 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear.

"We must fix the problem. I don't care about our time or the special stage victory. Tomorrow there will be dunes and soft sand and that will be a problem."

Sainz, meanwhile, was happy with his second place today: "I'm more or less happy with my day. We lost a minute and a half to Nasser by the end of the first section, but in the end we made up most of the time lost by pushing more on the last section where there was less navigation."

Peterhansel finished another half minute behind Sainz and has now fallen more than four minutes behind the leader.

Giniel de Villiers remains fourth, now 17 minutes off the lead, while Krzysztof Holowczyc closed in on him with the fourth fastest time today.

Home driver Orlando Terranova remains sixth after the last of the Argentinean special stages.

Stage three results:

Pos Driver                   Car         Time/Gap
 1. Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen  3h42m20s
 2. Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen      +24s
 3. Stephane Peterhansel     BMW             +59s
 4. Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW           +5m30s
 5. Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen    +5m53s
 6. Mark Miller              Volkswagen    +9m35s
 7. Leonid Novitskiy         BMW          +10m27s
 8. Orlando Terranova        BMW          +10m27s
 9. Guerlain Chicherit       Mini         +13m26s
10. Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi   +18m20s

Overall standings:

Pos Driver                   Car         Time/Gap
 1. Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen  9h12m05s
 2. Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen   + 3m34s
 3. Stephane Peterhansel     BMW          + 4m19s
 4. Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen  + 16m57s
 5. Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW         + 21m49s
 6. Orlando Terranova        BMW         + 29m07s
 7. Leonid Novitskiy         BMW         + 39m05s
 8. Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi  + 48m22s
 9. Nani Roma                Nissan      + 54m53s
10. Christian Lavieille      Nissan      + 57m55s

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