DAKAR MONDAY LIVE HERE!

All the action courtesy of Imperial Toyota

DAKAR 2017 STAGE 6 LIVE - Monday 9 January: La Paz - Uyuni

Bikes start 12h30 SA time; cars 18h20

Today's stage: 801km, Special: 166km. Altitude 3700-3900m

Come back here to follow the action as it unfolds today

PLEASE REFRESH PAGE REGULARLY FOR LATEST UPDATES

20h50 - cars - de Villiers ends up third (provisionally 3:33 off Peterhansel - no bad at all for a haigh altitude sage

20h45 - cars - Rautenbach is home - provisional fifth 11 minutes off the lead

20h35 - cars - Despres loses 9 minutes to his teammates and is passed overall by Roma's Toyota, which now leads him by 3 minutes

20h30 - cars - news from the stage is that Giniel de Villiers is looking good out there - just 2 minutes off Peterhansel at the 100km mark. He's due in in around 10 minutes...

20h25 - cars - Roma comes home - The Toyota's lost 5 minutes on the top two Peugeots, but where's Despres...?

20h22 - cars - Peterhansel in next - he's 48 seconds quicker than Loeb...

20h20 - cars - Loeb is first home...

20h10 - cars - Stephane Peterhansel holds the upper hand at 100km - he has taken 1:20 out of teammate Loeb and has caught3;58 from Roma and over 8 minutes over Despres...

19h50 - bikes - Botswana's Vince Crosbie has enjoyed a brilliant stage - provisionally 26th for the day and 40th overall...

19h15 - cars - The cars have started but there is very little news with no waypoints reporting times today. Bear with us - we will scratch for and bring you news as it breaks...

19h00 - bikes - Honda's Ricky Brabec pulled a late surprise when US rider edged Pablo Quintanilla to go fastest of the Motorcycles at the end of Dakar's seventh stage on Monda, while the Chilean Husqvarna rider closed the gap o overall leader, Brit Sam Sunderland's KTM by almost 3 minutes in the overall stakes. Sunderland was third on the day from Joan Barreda on another Honda af Xavier de Soultrait's Yamaha with =a third Honda in Sixth place ridden by France's Michel Metge.

Overall Sunderland leads Quintanilla by 15 minutes with de Soultrait third ahead of Adrien van Beveren's Yamaha, the KTMs of Farres Guell and Walkner and Soultrait. The Honda riders are all further adrift following their hour refuelling misdemeanor penalty last Wednesday

16h40 - bikes - First bikes have started the stage.

12h00 - cars - Peugeot has ruled out team orders between its leading trio Peterhansel, Loeb and Despres heading into the second week of the race: “It's just impossible to consider team orders at this point," team boss Bruno Famin explained as he refused to rule out even Giniel de Villiers who sits even an our off the lead. “The second week is going to be much more difficult, for sure, with much more difference in the time and when you have Nani Roma only five minutes behind, and even Hirvonen with 42 minutes, and even de Villiers with one hour - for the second week, what we are going to do is... just nothing - the only thing we have to do is be focused on our drivers and co-drivers, focused on the stages day after day, and to do our best day after day. "There is no other order than that.”

10h00 - cars “This is a critical stage of the race,” Toyota team boss Glyn Hall warned. “We aren’t allowed into the bivouac in Uyuni tonight, and the drivers and navigators have to do basic servicing themselves. "It is a heart-in-the-mouth situation, as we are powerless to help if anything goes wrong. "We do, however, have Rob Howie navigating for Conrad Rautenbach, putting him in the bivouac with the other Toyota crews - Rob is the chief fabricator of our race vehicles, and knows then intimately and as such, his presence in Uyuni may well prove invaluable...”

09h45 - cars - “The navigation on Friday was extremely tricky, and we lost a lot of time,” Giniel de Villiers admitted at the end of a difficult week for the Toyota driver. “To make things even tougher, the weather wreaked havoc with the stage, and the organisers had to shorten the route significantly.”

09h35 - bikes - Toby Price suffered a seizure, suspected to be caused by a blood clot in his lung following his crash on Wednesday. “I’ve had a couple of rough nights here in La Paz,” Price wrote on Twitter. “The language barrier has been extremely challenging, and I suffered a seizure which has rocked me a little bit. But the specialist is working hard to target the trigger to this and they are suspecting this was due to a blood clot in my lung." Reflecting on the crash, Price admitted: “All I can remember is hitting something hard, it was in a river bed and the last bit I remember is been face down into the ground after flying through the air and I was just in a daze for a while “The plan is to get me up on my feet in the next 24 hours and take a walk on my leg and If all goes well we can start to plan my trip back home to Australia and begin my rehabilitation, but it’s going to be a long road back to 100 per cent, but one thing for sure is I know I need to be back on the KTM motorcycle in four months – so I will be doing all I can to make this happen.”

09h30 - cars - Mini's Yazeed Al-Rajhi has returned to the race despite retiring ill during Thursday's stage after the team made an appeal to keep the recuperated driver in the race. “I felt sick, I felt I couldn't drive,” Al-Rajhi explained. “I couldn't drive after a headache, so we went off-stage and we went to service. "After I rested, they gave me an injection and now my health is good, I feel healthy, we can fight during the stage."

09h25 - cars - “It's 40 minutes, so by driving there's no way we can catch it,” Miko Hirvonen explained of his 40 minute deficit to the Dakar lead. “But, you know, if the same thing happens to them what happened to us, then you never know. “We're just going to go flat out, see if they have a problem - but that's the only chance, otherwise we'd just be cruising to the end.”

09h20 - bikes - Motorcycle leader Sam Sunderland is happy but wary on Dakar navigation this year. "It kind of changes from day to day and it's definitely pretty frustrating when you kind of take your time and still you aren't able to find the way, "You get really annoyed at yourself - and I think those are the times you need to try and keep a cool head and just accept you've made the mistake and move on, because the more you think about it or if you try and recover it too fast in the stage, you can have an accident. "They've given us almost hints for the notes, instead of really clear instructions - I think that's the plan of the organisers, to try and slow the race down a little bit. "Of course I'm going to say it was fair because I did it good - I think you have to just try to take your time and do the best you can. "When the car guys are getting lost - and they've got professional co-drivers sat there, only reading the roadbooks - then you know it's hard. "And we have to race and read the roadbook."

09h10 - cars - Car leader Sebastien Loeb reckons that work he and co-driver Elena have done since last year have had a most positive effect on the duo's performance “For sure. Last year we wouldn't be capable of doing this - I think Daniel improved a lot in the navigation, and we work much better together in the car - so for sure it helps a lot now and it gives us confidence to be able to win some stages with a lot of navigation." Loeb however remains wary of Dakar's navigatinal challenges: “We also see that any driver, any co-driver can be lost in some place. We know anything is possible.”

09h00 - cars - Peugeot's teams are set to take a cautious approach on today's no-assistance marathon stage. “We need to manage a little bit different - a marathon stage is always not full attack and we need to be a little bit more safe to save the car,” Dakar leader Stephane Peterhansel explained, while Sebastien Loeb added: “We know that it's important not to break everything on the first day because we don't have service at the end - It's important to be maybe a bit safe - but for the rest, nothing is different.”

DAKAR MONDAY LIVE HERE!
Following the cancellation of Saturday’ Stage 6 and Sunday’s rest day, Dakar’s ‘marathon' stage 7 will take a different route today as persistent bad weather conditions have forced race directors to change the course from La Paz to Uyuni. The new road book drafted during the rest day takes in 161km of racing — less than half of the original 322km — over 800km in total comprising aspects of the original routes of stages 6 and 7.

111 surviving motorcycles, 64 cars, 48 trucks and 30 quads are expected to line up for the day’s shortened 161km special over mainly sandy terrain following a 400km link and ending with another 240km open section. The special starts at 16h00, with the first motorcycles expected to reach the Uyuni bivouac at 9.30pm SA time. It remains to be seen if the many navigational concerns will be solved to prevent the level of competitors losing their way through week 1

Marathon stages do not allow any outside assistance, with teams adopting different approaches to the sprints of the past week. Keep up to date with Motorsport Media’s Imperial Toyota-backed live coverage right here for regular updates through the morning, with live coverage of the action as it happens through the afternoon.

Dakar 2017 Results - Cars - Overall

1. Stephane Peterhansel(Peugeot) 14:02:58

2. Sebastien Loeb (Peugeot) +1:09

3. Cyril Despres (Peugeot) +4:54

4. Nani Roma (Toyota) +5:35

5. Mikko Hirvonen (Mini)+42:21

6. Jakub Przygonski (Mini) +59:55

7. Orlando Terranova (Mini) +1:04:49

8. Giniel de Villiers (Toyota) +1:08:11

9. Boris Garafulic (Mini) +1:57:40

10.Romain Dumas (Peugeot) +2:27:15

15. Conrad Rautenbach (Toyota) +4:20:19