Prologue, Exit Ceremony and Chaos. This is how you can summarize the first two days of the Dakar in the motorcycle category. And in both the prologue and the first stage looping around Ha’il, the protagonist has been the same. After achieving victory in the prologue and choosing the most delayed starting position possible, in this case the fifteenth, Daniel Sanders has repeated his stage triumph on the back of his GasGas and is more leader in the category. Pablo Quintanilla finished second, being the only one of Sanders’ rivals who did not lose his way before kilometer 280 of the special.
Motorcycles
David Castera warned before the start of today’s special that the stage hid surprises and that the first differences were going to occur. And it has not failed. With the first fifteen ‘motards’ placed in reverse order to the result of the prologue as a consequence of the possibility that all of them had to choose their starting position, the ‘chaos’ has not taken long to appear. Daniel Sanders has taken the lead of the race from the first checkpoint and thus it has reached the intermediate neutralization. With everything, The GasGas rider had barely achieved 47 seconds ahead of Pablo Quintanilla with two thirds of the stage already completed.
But nevertheless, shortly before kilometer 280 the debacle began for all the pilots that Daniel Sanders had ahead. Luciano Benavides and Ricky Brabec were the first drivers to lose their way, which fueled the doubts of each and every one of their pursuers. Spanish Joan Barreda, Andrew Short, Toby Price, Sam Sunderland, Adrien Van Beveren, Matthias Walkner and Kevin Benavides fell into the ‘trap’. They also couldn’t get past this tricky point without wasting time on Ross Branch and Skyler Howes, although they both managed to save the ballot with some dignity. Nevertheless, the ‘damage’ was already done for almost everyone.
Daniel Sanders got the victory with a final time of 3 hours, 43 minutes and 10 seconds, beating Pablo Quintanilla in 2 minutes and 7 seconds, the rider who started the stage just ahead of the Australian. For his part, third was Matthias Walkner, one of the few riders who managed to get back on track almost without wasting time. Fruit of chaos among the favorites, Mason Klein has surprisingly slipped into fourth place, with Spaniard Lorenzo Santolino occupying fifth place. Adrien Van Beveren, Xavier de Soultrait and Sam Sunderland were the last to save the stage in logical times, although they gave up more than 10 minutes with Sanders.
The bleeding of minutes between the leaders reinforces this ‘ode to chaos’. Sam Sunderland has lost 12 minutes, being perhaps the best unemployed person of this stage once he has been immersed in this situation. Ross Branch has given up 17 minutes, while Kevin Benavides, Joan Barreda, Andrew Short have been left more than half an hour. Things have gone worse for Toby Price, Nacho Cornejo, Ricky Brabec and Lucio Benavides, with a loss closer to 45 minutes. As a result of these results, Danilo Petrucci has managed to sneak in 13th at the end of the stage, as the Italian has barely lost two minutes in the problematic section of the day.