Sainz says his Dakar defence is over as Lategan leads

Carlos Sainz wrote off his chances of defending the Dakar Rally title on Monday after ending the 48-hour second stage in Saudi Arabia more than an hour and half behind new leader Henk Lategan.

The 62-year-old Spaniard flipped his Ford Raptor onto its roof in the desert dunes on Sunday and then lost more time when the stage resumed on Monday with a puncture and problems in finding the route.

The father of Formula One driver Carlos Sainz Jr. ended the day 20th overall.

"There's a still a long way to go but clearly my chances of winning have disappeared," the four-times Dakar winner told reporters, saying everything had gone wrong.

"If I can help the team, if I can learn and test some things then so much the better."

The two-week rally ends on Jan. 17.

Saudi Arabia's Yazeed Al-Rajhi won the 967km Chrono stage, despite a two-minute penalty for speeding, in a non-works Toyota and was second overall behind South African Lategan, who drives for the factory Toyota team.

Qatar's five-times winner Nasser Al-Attiyah, in third place for Dacia, picked up a four-minute penalty for the same offence as Al-Rajhi.

That left Lategan and co-driver Brett Cummings, winners of Friday's prologue to the two-week event, four minutes and 45 seconds clear.

"Towards the end of the really long dunes section, I got sick, had to stop and get out of the car for a bit," said Lategan, who took over at the top from American teammate Seth Quintero.

"After the dunes cleared, I started enjoying it a bit again.

"It’s actually a big surprise to be first because we haven’t been really focusing on it. But I’m happy with that. We’ve been playing a more strategic game over these two days."

Australian Toby Price and Britain's Sam Sunderland, both double winners in the motorcycle category and now teammates on four wheels, moved up to fourth overall with Overdrive Racing.

Nine-times world rally champion Sebastien Loeb staged an impressive recovery from lost time due to engine fan problems on Sunday and was in sixth place for Dacia and nearly 19 minutes off the lead.

Ford's Mattias Ekstroem was fifth.

In the motorcycle category, Australian Daniel Sanders took his third consecutive stage win to take a 12 and a half minute lead over American Skyler Howes with Botswana's Ross Branch third.

Defending champion Ricky Brabec of the United States was in fifth place, 15 minutes behind Sanders.

Tuesday's 495km third stage is from the south-west town of Bisha northwards to Al-Henakiyah.