Frenchman Jean-Louis Schlesser, Spaniard Marc Coma and Poland’s Rafal Sonik maintained their overall leads in the respective car, motorcycle and quad categories after the second and longest selective section of the 2013 Sealine Cross-Country Rally in Qatar yesterday.

But the day’s stage wins fell to Schlesser, Chile’s Francisco Lopez and Emirati Obaid Al-Kitbe.

“Nice to get the stage win again but we had a problem near the end,” said Schlesser, who extended his lead to over 35 minutes. “I stopped about 20km from the end. There was a difficult dune and it caught me by surprise. I could not start the car, so I waited for a few minutes and we managed to get going again.”

His closest rival Krzysztof Holowczyc also stopped in the soft sand for several minutes on the run north to the stage finish after overcoming an earlier time-consuming puncture, but he maintained second overall with the sixth quickest time. Poland’s Martin Kaczmarski, Venezuelan Nunzio Coffaro and Kazakh Aidyn Rakhimbayev were second, third and fourth on the day’s stage in three Overdrive Toyotas.

Local hero Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah began brightly and was comfortably the quickest car driver until a stray stone damaged his Buggy’s oil filter after the first checkpoint and forced the disappointed Qatari out of the event.

“I hit nothing. It was just a stone that hit the oil filter and we lost the oil,” said a dejected Al-Attiyah. “We could do nothing other than to stop. On our Buggy the oil filter is low down and this can happen – on other Buggies, like Schlesser, it is higher up. Now we will try and carry out some testing while the team is here over the coming days.”

Coma maintained an unofficial overall lead of just three seconds, despite being caught by his closest rivals on the tricky stage and running in convoy to the finish. Lopez won the special by 1min 39sec and retained fifth. Poland’s Jakub Przygonski and Norway’s Pal-Anders Ullevalseter were second and third and now hold fourth and third in the overall standings, with Paulo Gonçalves in second.

Rafal Sonik was passed soon after the start by Obaid Al-Kitbe, but the Pole held on to take second among the quads on the day’s stage and he maintains a sizeable advantage heading into day three. Al-Kitbe duly claimed the stage win by over 34 minutes.

Reinaldo Varela and Gustavo Gugelmin, who had crashed their car heavily over a cut face dune near the end of Tuesday’s stage, were detained in hospital with both Brazilians suffering from compression fractures to their vertebrae.

The incident bore an uncanny resemblance to the one that had injured Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Alex Winocq in the recent Hail Rally in Saudi Arabia.

Positions on SS2 – 413.19km (unofficial):

Cars — 1. Jean-Louis Schlesser (FRA)/Konstantin Zhiltstov (RUS) Schlesser Original 4hr 28min 12sec 2. Martin Kaczmarski (POL)/Bartlomiej Boba (POL) Toyota Hilux 4hr 37min 04sec 3. Nunzio Coffaro (VEN)/Daniel Meneses (VEN) Toyota Hilux 4hr 39min 02sec 4. Aidyn Rakhimbayev (KAZ)/Vladimir Demiyaneko (RUS) Toyota Hilux 4hr 40min 42sec 5. Miroslav Zapletal (CZE)/Maciej Marton (POL) Hummer H3 Evo 4hr 45min 48sec 6. Krzysztof Holowczyc (POL)/Andreas Schulz (DEU) Mini All4 Racing 4hr 47min 02sec

Bikes — 1. Francesco Lopez (CHL) KTM 450 Rally Replica 4hr 46min 23sec 2. Jakub Przygonski (POL) KTM 450 Rally Replica 4hr 48min 02sec 3. Pal-Anders Ullevalseter (NOR) KTM 450 Rally Replica 4hr 50min 08sec 4. Paulo Gonçalves (PRT) Speedbrain 450 Rally 4hr 52min 01sec 5. Marc Coma (ESP) KTM 450 Rally Replica 4hr 53min 58sec

Quads — 1. Obaid Al-Kitbe (ARE) Honda TRX 700 5hr 20min 49sec 2. Rafal Sonik (POL) Honda TRX 700 5hr 55min 14sec 3. Mohammed Al-Shamsi (ARE)Honda TRX 700 5hr 56min 49sec