Australia's two-times champion Toby Price has made another significant advance amid the dramatic dunes of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia as he moved up to fifth place in the Dakar Rally.
Over the first half of the brutal race's first-ever 48-hour marathon stage, the Hillston motorcycle ace got to his overnight bivouac on Thursday evening in third place for the day, as he shot up two places from seventh place on the virtual overall standings.
Price, winner in 2016 and 2019, had admitted after the fifth stage that it was time for him to start to play catch-up after a mistake-riddled first week - and he did just that.
First, Wednesday's stage winner Pablo Quintanilla suffered a calamity amid the unending dunes, miscalculating and running out of fuel 10km before the first refuelling point and losing over an hour and 40 minutes on the leaders.
Then Price got past last year's winner Kevin Benavides to move within half-an-hour of the new race leader, American Ricky Brabec, who has edged past Botswana's overnight leader Ross Branch by 2 minutes 48 seconds on the virtual standings.
Price still has his work cut out chasing the Monster Energy Hondas of Brabec, third-placed Chilean Jose Floriimo and half-way stage leader Adrien Van Beveren, but he's now in with a shot of winning his first stage of the 2024 event, only 1:49 behind the Frenchman.
If he could win at the end of the 626km stage on Friday, it would keep up Price's remarkable record of having won a stage at every edition of the Dakar since he first raced in 2015.
Price's Australian colleague Daniel Sanders, on his GasGas, also had a good outing, fourth on the day and moving up to seventh overall on the virtual standings, 36:08 behind Brabec and just under eight minutes behind his fellow Aussie.
In the cars, overnight leader Yazeed Al-Rajhi suffered a race-ending accident when his Overdrive Toyota hit a bump and barrel-rolled, suffering heavy damage. It ended the Saudi's hopes of a first overall victory on home terrain.
Audi's Carlos Sainz, a triple Dakar winner, led the virtual rankings while defending champion Nasser Al-Attiyah dropped back to third.
