DOHA — 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 Wednesday. 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. 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. Marc 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. — SG
