Ford secured its second straight stage win at the Dakar Rally on Thursday, with Mattias Ekstrom (pictured above) following up Nani Roma’s Stage 10 win by besting Nasser Al-Attiyah — his rival for the final podium place — by 41 seconds on the dunes of Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter. In spite of his own good showing, the Dacia driver trails the Swede by more than four minutes going into tomorrow’s final stage.

That showdown stage will begin with a new driver at the top of the general rankings, Yazeed Al Rajhi drew on all his skill in taming the dunes to place third on the stage and move back past fellow Toyota driver Henk Lategan, who placed fifth today. The Saudi driver holds an advantage of 6m11s over the South African going into Friday’s short 61km charge to the finish line.

“I know I can do it. I trusted myself,” said Al Rajhi, who started the day 2m27s behind after losing time yesterday when he got stuck in a hollow after driving too cautiously. This time he took the opposite approach: “I attacked and enjoyed,” he said simply. It paid off.

America’s Sara Price claimed her second stage win of the rally in the SSV class, completing the stage 3m30s ahead of her Can-Am teammate “Chaleco” Lopez. The latter took advantage of more mechanical misfortune for Xavier de Soultrait to climb into second position in the general rankings, albeit more than two hours behind the runaway overall leader, America’s Brock Heger (Polaris).

In the bikes, Tosha Schareina regained 7m31s over Daniel Sanders on a special whose distance was reduced by half due to safety concerns over foggy conditions in the dunes. The Spaniard still trails the Australian KTM rider by nine minutes, though, before the final 61-km stage with a grouped start.

Adrien Van Beveren, third in the general rankings, battled to defend his position against Luciano Benavides. Although the Argentinean finished ahead of the Frenchman by 24s on this special, he remains in fourth in the general, 6m26s from the podium.

America’s Corbin Leaverton, who led deep into the stage in the Challenger class, suffered another disappointment when he lost nearly an hour to a mechanical problem, ending his hopes of a good overall finish. Yasir Seaidan took advantage of Leaverton’s problems to win his third stage, finishing more than 5m ahead of Pau Navarro and 7m in front of yesterday’s winner Dania Akeel. Nicholas Cavigliasso can cruise through the final sprint, which he will start with a lead of 1h11m.