We continue at the foot of the canyon in the Dakar. Second marathon of the rally completed and also with good feelings. There are only three stages left to finish … my first participation in this test. Do I feel sorry for this to end? Good question. At the moment I’m focusing on finishing, I don’t want to skip the steps.
This Wednesday’s stage went very well for me. It was quite hard even though it was not excessively long. Mainly 250 kilometers of very soft dunes, very cut and with sectors of 80 kilometers of smaller and softer dunes that were much worse for driving because you cannot flow at all. When you crossed one of those smaller dunes, your motorcycle would get stuck in the sand itself and you couldn’t move forward. It was crazy. Instead of having a small valley between them of normal sand, what you found was broken dirt that made for a very intense ride.
As soon as I started in the morning, at the first kilometer of the route, I stopped the bike when I saw Arnau Lledó on the ground, another rider who is a good friend of mine and who was very far ahead in the classification. I was very sad to see him fall, because it was clear that the rally was over for him. It has affected me personally and it has been difficult for me to get myself together. I was quite unfocused in the first 20 kilometers of the stage.
I’ve gotten stuck in quite a few dunes. Fortunately, as the kilometers passed I managed to refocus and regain the positions I lost. I ended up in a very good position at the end. The 47th.
There have been up to three casualties, which indicates the severity of the stage. The first half of the marathon that we ran on Tuesday was quite good, very fluid, with sections of dunes, but above all tracks. I caught my teammate Leo, who has been doing an incredible Dakar, although in the end I had to cut back a little because I was pushing too hard. Of course, they gave me the first two-minute penalty for speeding. It was unintentionally.
The second night we lived in the tent in the middle of the desert was not as good as the first night last week. It was very hot and humid, although it may seem hard to believe the latter. I have sweated a lot in the tent. As if this were not enough, there was another pilot next to my tent who snored a lot and wouldn’t let me sleep. It was a pretty bad night, but we recovered well. Yanbu is getting closer.
Worth a look
