An issue with road book navigation has caused Australian motorcyclist Toby Price to go 900 metres off the track before he finished fifth in the third stage of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia.
Two-time winner Price and Frenchman Xavier de Soultrait were both in the top four when a road book error displayed a waypoint incorrectly.
Rally officials were then forced to record the duo’s stage times before they veered off track, which saw Price rise from 11th to fifth in the Neom stage.
After winning stage one and finishing 17th in stage two, Tuesday’s result lifted Price up to sixth overall.
“In the early parts of the stage we were getting on pretty damn good but unfortunately, I made a few mistakes which really cost me,” he said.
“One of those mistakes was towards the end of the stage, where I had a hard time tracking down a specific WPC which was marked in a really tricky position; not sure what the go is here.”
American Ricky Brabec, who finished five seconds behind Price in the opening stage, won the third stage to climb to take the lead overall.
Aussie Rodney Faggoter finished 14th in the third stage with countrymen Trevor Wilson (89th), Ben Young (90th) and Matthew Tisdall (125th).
In the car category, Carlos Sainz won a stage race for the 33rd time.
Sainz leads the overall rankings ahead of Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah.
Spaniard Fernando Alonso, the first Formula 1 champion to compete in the race, finished the stage in fifth place.
The third stage was one of the trickiest of the competition, with drivers having to put in the kilometres over a loop that started and ended in Neom, a future business and leisure city on the shores of the Red Sea, near the Saudi border with Egypt and Jordan.
Stage 4 will see competitors race from Neom to Al-‘Ula.