Stephane Peterhansel has seen his overall lead trimmed as American Robby Gordon claimed the 12th stage of the Dakar Rally car race.
Gordon drove flawlessly to win the stage by more than 15 minutes from Russian Leonid Novotskiy, with South African Giniel de Villiers a further seven seconds back in third.
Peterhansel finished a disappointing seventh after getting stuck in sand dunes, and saw 15 minutes sliced off his overall lead.
He still holds a 20 minute buffer over his closest rival, Nani Roma, with third-placed de Villiers more than an hour adrift.
Saturday's penultimate stage takes competitors from Nazca to Pisco, before reaching the finish line in Lima on Sunday.
In the bike race, Spain's Marc Coma reclaimed the overall lead after winning stage 12 on Friday.
Coma handled the conditions best on the journey from Arequipa to Nazca, finishing 2 minutes, 43 seconds ahead of compatriot Joan Barreda Bort, with another Spaniard, Kordi Villadoms 27 seconds further back in third.
Most importantly for Coma, arch-rival Cyril Despres of France could only manage to finish fourth, 3:57 behind the leader.
That deficit was enough to hand the overall lead back to Coma, with the Spaniard taking a 1:35 advantage with two stages remaining.
"It was a difficult day," Coma said.
"For the entire first part of the special I mainly focused on navigation, because there was absolutely no room for mistakes."
"After that, I knew that there would be good opportunities to attack in the second part and that's where I managed to regain ground on Cyril. It's no way near over, because there's another big stage tomorrow."