Stage 14: Alphand on form

Alphand could only manage seventh place on the 225km stage across Senegal from Tambacounda to the capital Dakar, but still took 3:59 seconds off his fellow Frenchman, who leads by just 7:16.

Even with the reduced gap though, victory remains a tall order for Alphand.

Spaniard Carlos Sainz won his third stage in a row, and his fifth of the rally, leading home a Volkswagen 1-2-3 of former rally leaders as Giniel de Villiers backed him up in second, just seven seconds behind, and Carlos Sousa in his Phoenix Motorsport-run Touareg ended up 45 seconds down.

Fourth on the stage, as he is in the overall standings was Nasser Al-Attiyah, who did exactly what he needed to in order to halt the charge of Mark Miller - who wants the position for himself, but remains eight minutes behind.

Both trail third-place Jean-Louis Schlesser, who was again quiet but finished in the top ten once more, as he has no chance of catching the Mitsubishis, who lead him by 93 minutes.

Sixth overall remains Hiroshi Masuoka – now driving as a repair truck for his Mitsuishi team-mates – with Sousa seventh, Robby Gordon – an impressive fifth today – eighth and Sainz Ninth. Stephane Henrard rounds out the top ten.

Jean de Azevedo claimed a well-deserved stage win on his Petrobras Lubrax KTM after a perfectly-judged ride.

Lying ten hours off the lead after a rally beset by mechanical problems, the 32-year-old Brazilian rider had nothing to lose as the rally headed towards Dakar, so he went for it, with glorious results as he became the eighth different stage winner of the event.

Azevedo's winning margin was 5:05 over Latvian Janis Vinters, with American Chris Blais just seven seconds further back on his Red Bull KTM.

Fourth on the stage was Frenchman Cyril Despres, and that was more than enough to keep his overall lead intact with just one more day to go.

In fact, with his Gauloises KTM team-mate David Casteu over three minutes slower on the stage in fifth, Despres extended his lead to 36:09 to leave him on-course for a second Dakar win in three years.

Blais maintained his third place, but will be cursing the 16 minutes he lost to an oil leak on stage two. He took back five minutes on Casteu to leave 17 behind.

The rest of the top six remains unchanged with Norway's Pal Andres Ullevalseter fifth, Portugal's Helder Rodrigues - the first non-KTM-mounted rider - and Vinters filling the spots.

Michel Marchini, Thierry Bethys and Jaroslav Katrinak all retained their spots, but there was a position switch for the final place on the top-ten leaderboard as Poland's Jacek Czachor passed Dutchman Henk Knuiman.

Not content with leading both the car and bike categories, French compeitors refused to let anyone have a look-in in the trucks too - or at least they did today as Philippe Jacquot took his first stage victory.

Jacquot, who lies sixth overall, took his MAN to a 4:33 win over Czech driver Ales Loprais' Tatra, while Brazilian Andre de Azevedo was third, nine minutes back.

Overall, the stage went in favour of rally leader Hans Stacey, from Holland, who was fourth quickest in his MAN and extended his lead over Russian Ilgizar Mardeev to 3:08:15.