After the disappointment of Stage 4, which saw both Giniel de Villiers/Dirk von Zitzewitz and Nasser Al Attiyah/Mathieu Baumel lose significant time, Toyotagazoo racing SA really needed a day of consolidation – and that’s exactly what all three crews delivered on Stage 5 of Dakar 2018. The stage was yet another extremely tough one, and consisted of 268 km of special stage, with 666 km of liaison on top of that. To make matters even more interesting, 84% of the stage was run on soft dunes, similar to those that brought the team so much woe on Stage 4. The drive of the day again belonged to Dutchman Bernhard ten Brinke, paired with French navigator Michel Périn. The pair not only recorded a perfectly clean stage, but also kept pace with the leading Peugeot of Stephane Peterhansel over terrain that was much more suited to the buggy. In the end Ten Brinke/Périn ended the stage with a deficit of only five minutes to the Peugeot.