Frenchman Jean-Pierre Fontenay, driving a Mitsubishi, extended his overall lead in the Paris-Dakar rally by winning the 745km, 13th stage from Nema to Tidjika in the Mauritanian desert.

But the Frenchman didn't have it all his way, "Coming up the Enji Pass we hit a stone and punctured the left rear tyre," Fontenay said.

"Normally we would have stopped straight away but on such a steep incline we didn't dare. Instead, we just kept on climbing on three wheels all the way to the top."

And reinforcing Mitsubishi superiority, team-mate and defending champion Kenjiro Shinozuka of Japan, came in second, Bruno Saby of France third and Hiroshi Masuoka of Japan fourth; all driving Mitsubishi cars.

Mitsubishi drivers now fill the top four places overall.

Race leader Jean-Pierre Fontenay passes Elephant Rock

On the motorcycles, Andy Haydon, the Australian Safari champion was just over three minutes ahead of South African Alfie Cox, also on an Austrian KTM, at the finish of the 13th stage.

Five times winner Stephane Peterhansel of France finished third place on his Yamaha in the stage but overall he is more than 30 minutes ahead of second-placed Italian Fabrizio Meoni on a KTM.

Cox, who got lost for about 15 minutes, said: "Eventually I found my way again and started picking the other riders off one by one.

"Towards the end I came up on the lead group. Everybody was sitting behind Peterhansel and when my GPS showed that we'd gone through the last way point I overtook him and went flat out for the finish line."

Frenchman Richard Sainct, second overall at the start of the stage, also got lost and dropped to third overall.

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