Gordon had cut Stéphane's lead to just 1:17 minutes by the time they headed into the dunes after about 200 kilometres of the stage. Stéphane had already made up another 33 seconds by the next time check, and had extended his lead by a further 2:01 minutes about 60 kilometres later. However, things were to get even worse for Gordon, who was forced to stop for over eleven minutes. Stéphane was off and away.Alos of note, Gordon has been allowed to continue the race although he and his Hummer have been technically disqualified pending inspection and technical regs review due to what Brian Adkins calls "AirGate AKA suspected Redneck Supercharging!"
Only team-mate Nani Roma set a faster time than Stéphane, securing his third stage victory at the 2012 Dakar and completing a one-two for the X-raid team. Nani also moved ahead of Gordon into second place overall, 19:05 minutes behind Stéphane. Gordon dropped back to third place and is now 19:51 minutes behind Stéphane.
Unlike Nani and Stéphane, Krzysztof Holowczyc and Leonid Novitskiy had a mixed day eleven. After about 50 kilometres Krzysztof was forced to stop for about an hour to fix a problem with his steering. He was then able to continue, but had to stop again after 232 kilometres. As such, any thoughts of second place have gone down the drain for now. Leonid also had problems at about the same point on the stage. The Russian lost time when he strayed from the correct route. Ricardo Leal dos Santos in the fifth MINI finished with the sixth fastest time of the day.
Now, on to the tape, courtesy of www.facebook.com/dakar © Amaury Sport Organisation via Brian Adkins (car recap starts at 1:55):
