The 2018 Dakar Rally is finally underway after 139 bikes, 92 cars, 49 quads and 44 trucks revved their engines on the start line in Lima.
Stage one out of 14 consisted of a 242km liaison from the Peruvian capital up the Pacific Coast to Pisco, where a 31km special stage took place.
It was a short but tactical start to the 40th edition of the legendary rally raid race, with drivers potentially not wanting to open the road on Sunday and leave a trail for their rivals to follow.
Sunday sees a 267km special stage looping around Pisco, with 90% of the route off-piste.
Car
As he did last year, two-time winner Nasser Al-Attiyah put his foot to the floor right from the get-go to win the opening stage of the race in his Toyota Hilux.
The Qatari opened up leads of more than two minutes over Stéphane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz, and five minutes over Sébastien Loeb who struggled with a brake failure on his Peugeot 3008DKR Maxi just three kilometres into the special stage.
Hey! First stage of @dakar is done! All good, here are the times :
1️⃣ Al-Attiyah 21m51s
2️⃣ Ten Brinke +25s
3️⃣ Fuchs +34s
4️⃣ Menzies +38s
5️⃣ Roma +53s
6️⃣ De Villiers +54s
7️⃣ Alvarez +1m12s
8️⃣ Hirvonen +1m36s
9️⃣ Przygonski +1m45s
? Prokop +2m04s pic.twitter.com/FyxCz2x8Pf— Mikko Hirvonen (@MikkoWRC) January 6, 2018
Bike
British history maker Sam Sunderland has been sleeping in an oxygen tent to prepare for the race this year, and the Red Bull KTM Factory Team rider got his title defence off to a blistering start by posting the fastest time and winning the stage in front of Adrien van Beveren and Pablo Quintanilla. Teammate and 2016 winner Toby Price was more than three minutes back in 14th, with Laia Sanz coming home 12th.
Quad
Chilean Ignacio Casale, the 2014 winner and 2017 runner-up, got his race up and running with a confident victory by crossing the line one minute ahead of defending champion Sergey Karyakin. Frenchman Sébastien Souday took third.
