Sébastien Loeb finished Stage 3 in fourth, which normally isn’t something to write home about. In Thursday’s case, however, it propelled him into the South African Safari Rally’s overall lead.

After a very cold night in the marathon camp, Loeb entered the second Marathon Stage in seventh overall. Despite missing the stage podium, finishing nearly a minute back of Mathieu Serradori for third, all six drivers in front of him had poor days and shot him all the way up to the top of the leaderboard.

Overall leader Seth Quintero lost eight and a half minutes due to a series of navigation errors that dropped him to 15th for the day, which in turn caused him to sink seven positions. Second-placed Brian Baragwanath was 11th and dropped to sixth, while Gareth Woolridge missed a waypoint and got lost to fall from fourth to seventh.

Others like Lucas Moraes and Henk Lategan managed to hold their ground as those around them failed. Lategan had to overcome a broken driveshaft that left him in three-wheel-drive, willing his Hilux to a fifth.

“It looks like everybody lost a bit of time during this stage and now we’re leading the rally,” said Loeb. “Things are still very tight in the classification and we need two more good days to get the result we want.”

Nasser Al-Attiyah, who’s struggled with penalties all race, finally scored his first stage win of the race as he beat Carlos Sainz by 2:05; ironically, Al-Attiyah got another two minutes tacked on for speeding. He also got another 40 seconds added by the FIA on Thursday because of a torque meter violation in Stage 2. Serradori rebounded from his DNF on Wednesday to place third. Due to his difficult first two days, Al-Attiyah sits 12th overall.

Sainz’s runner-up and everyone’s mistakes were also a major boon for him in the overall as he skyrocketed into the top ten. Initially 11th in the general ranking, he is now second and just 23 seconds back of Loeb. Lategan and Moraes are third and fourth, respectively a mere 30 and 56 seconds behind the leader. Nani Roma is fifth and 2:41 back.

Unlike in Ultimate, the Challenger leader David Zille got some breathing room as he won the stage ahead of Nicolás Cavigliasso, bumping up their margin from five seconds to 2:56. Likewise, Mário Franco’s advantage over Richard Aczel in SSV grew from 2:29 to over ten and a half minutes.

SSV points leader Alexandre Pinto had a disappointing day as mechanical issues struck again.

Daniel Sanders and Luciano Benavides once again led a KTM 1–2 in the cold. Ross Branch rebounded from his last-place RallyGP run on Wednesday, which was caused by him hitting a bird that damaged the oil cooler, to finish third.

Ricky Brabec settled for fourth after crashing and hitting a stone that damaged his exhaust. He and teammate Skyler Howes also got lost, as did most riders for what Honda manager Ruben Faria surmised was due to a “lack of information on that note in the roadbook.”

Konrad Dąbrowski finished ninth in Rally2, slowed down by his rear wheel getting stuck in fence wire at around KM 80 for over half an hour.

Stage 3 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	200	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Dacia Sandriders	2:51:29
Challenger	16	308	David Zille	BBR Motorsport	3:02:37
SSV	29	407	Mário Franco	Franco Sport	3:18:28

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:06:46
Rally2	9	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:22:51
Quad	18	174	Gaëtan Martinez	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	3:55:01

Leaders after Stage 3

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	219	Sébastien Loeb	Dacia Sandriders	8:47:05
Challenger	16	308	David Zille	BBR Motorsport	9:19:32
SSV	31	407	Mário Franco	Franco Sport	10:17:43

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	9:41:32
Rally2	7	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	10:17:12
Quad	17	174	Gaëtan Martinez	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	12:17:51

Featured image credit: Irina Petrichei / Edophoto / DPPI / ASO