Competitors are in the thick of this year’s gruelling Dakar.

With enough sand flying to satisfy the personal hygiene needs of at least six Persian cats, the 2019 Dakar is well and truly underway.

Well-known Carlos Sainz, who was ranked in 6th place leading into Wednesday’s 200-mile belter, crashed heavily in his his X-Raid Mini JCW Buggy, leaving him stranded for three hours and putting him in a deep hole in terms of taking a victory.

“The roadbook is a bit of a disaster this year,” said Sainz in an interview after the incident. “We were going at a good pace, but we weren’t attacking hard, and we got into a ditch that should have been marked on the roadbook.” The nefarious ditch in question was located just 24 miles into the stage and diving into it mangled the buggy’s left-front suspension.

Meanwhile, teammate Stephane Peterhansel secured his first stage win of the 2019 Dakar Rally yesterday, after crossing the second waypoint tied with Toyota’s Nasser Al-Attiyah. From there, he steadily pulled clear of the pack and ultimately won by 3 minutes and 26 seconds. Peterhansel now sits in third overall.

Al-Attiyah now leads overall by 6m48s over the best of the X-Raid Mini entries. This is good news for his Toyota team, especially since team manager Glyn Hall has said they must capitalize on this year’s race and claim a milestone first win for the Japanese brand.

Eduard Nikolaev continues to lead the too-fantastic trucks category – your author’s favorite type of machine at the Dakar – but it was another Kamaz driver, Andrey Karginov, who won the day’s stage. He bested Iveco rival Federico Villagra by 11 minutes on Wednesday.

Can-Am is currently leading the SxS category and has multiple squads gunning for the win and podium spots. American desert racer Casey Currie and team is wheeling a Maverick-based Can-Am stickered up with Monster Energy decals through the brutal ten days of Dakar.

Live tracking for all the teams in their respective classes can be found here on the official Dakar website.