Australian Dakar rookie Toby Price has added the title ‘Dakar stage winner’ to his long list of achievements after he topped the sheets for special stage 12 on the road from Termas Rio Hondo to Rosario – the penultimate and longest day of the 2015 Dakar.

Price saved his best for (almost) last, winning the day by a 1m55s over early rally leader Joan Barreda, with super-consistent Portuguese Paolo Goncalves third.

Importantly, Price’s victory pulled him 10m7s clear of his competition for third place in the Dakar, Chilean Pablo Qunitanilla, who now trails the KTM 450 Rally rider by 11m41s with a day to go.

Toby Price: “At this stage everything is just feeling good. We’re enjoying it, so it’s been a good experience. There have been a lot of highs and lows and good learning curves as well as a few mistakes, but we’re trying to fix them as best as we can and get to the finishing line.

“Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. I always knew it was going to be difficult, but you don’t know until you actually come here and have a go. Then you find out how hard it really is.”

World Rally and defending Dakar champion Marc Coma will take a commanding lead of nearly 18 minutes into tonight’s final stage from Rosario back to the rally’s starting point of Buenos Aires, with second-placed Goncalves 7m29s clear of third-placed Price.

Compared with today’s massive 1024-kilometre stage, the final day of the Dakar is a relatively generous one – a ‘mere’ 393 kilometres, of which just 174km is special stage.

But woe betides the competitor who clocks off early, with the sobering statistic that every year, at least one competitor retires in the final stage.