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Al-Attiyah claims first Dakar win

Volkswagen's Nasser Al-Attiyah clinched his maiden Dakar Rally victory with the second-fastest time on the final stage, which was won by his team-mate Carlos Sainz

Al-Attiyah hit the front of the legendary event when long-time leader Sainz lost a lot of ground in sand dunes on stage eight earlier this week. Sainz tried to fight back only to suffer even worse delays with various damaged components on stages 10 and 11, pushing him back to third in an all-VW podium behind Giniel de Villiers.

Second place on today's final 181-kilometre blast back to Buenos Aires gave Al-Attiyah a final winning margin of nearly 50 minutes over de Villiers, who was in turn half an hour clear of Sainz.

X-Raid BMW driver Stephane Peterhansel had been in thick of a three-way battle with Sainz and Al-Attiyah during the first week of the event, before a series of punctures saw him lose touch with the lead fight, and eventually fall right back to finish in fourth place.

His team-mate Krzysztof Holowczyc completed the final top five, ahead of VW's fourth works driver Mark Miller, as the leading drivers cruised to the finish without incident.

Stage 13 results:

Pos  Driver                   Car         Time/Gap
 1.  Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen  1h16m08s
 2.  Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen     + 38s
 3.  Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW          + 1m25s
 4.  Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen   + 1m58s
 5.  Mark Miller              Volkswagen   + 2m02s
 6.  Stephane Peterhansel     BMW          + 2m57s
 7.  Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi   + 3m58s
 8.  Erik van Loon            Mitsubishi   + 6m26s
 9.  Alfie Cox                Nissan       + 8m47s
10.  Christian Lavieille      Nissan       + 8m59s

Final overall positions:

Pos  Driver                   Car            Time/Gap
 1.  Nasser Al-Attiyah        Volkswagen    21h16m16s
 2.  Giniel de Villiers       Volkswagen     + 49m41s
 3.  Carlos Sainz             Volkswagen   + 1h20m38s
 4.  Stephane Peterhansel     BMW          + 1h43m48s
 5.  Krzysztof Holowczyc      BMW          + 4h11m21s
 6.  Mark Miller              Volkswagen   + 4h54m42s
 7.  Ricardo Leal dos Santos  BMW          + 6h50m07s
 8.  Christian Lavieille      Nissan       + 7h57m18s
 9.  Guilherme Spinelli       Mitsubishi   + 8h23m37s
10.  Matthias Kahle           SMG         + 15h11m56s

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