Although the Dakar is an unpredictable event, when push comes to shove experts and fans place the same names in the pools to the final triumph. It happens in each category, but in the same way every year they sneak among the best names who are not called to do it or pilots who manage to tiptoe through the race to climb to the top positions, without making noise. They are the ‘silent’ corridors and in the first four stages of the Dakar there are already a few exponents. Lorenzo Santolino on motorcycles and Luciano Álvarez on cars are the two clearest exponents, even if their names are echoed by the media coverage of both categories.
In fact, Lorenzo Santolino is an expert in moving without making noise. Part of the basis of competing with Sherco, manufacturer light years in budget and impact of KTM, Honda or Yamaha. From there, the man from Salamanca moves perfectly in the traditional back and forth in the motorcycle category from day to day in order of departure. Therefore, without raising his voice, Santolino is fifth overall when he only entered the ‘top 5’ in the fourth stage and it has even been twentieth in the third. And the best sample is that he is 10 minutes and 28 seconds behind Sam Sunderland.
With everything, the greatest exponent of a ‘silent’ runner is Lucio Álvarez. He used the prologue and the first stage to get off to a good start and from there, he has moved like nobody else to avoid problems. No navigation errors, no breakdowns and without other circumstances that have been eliminating some of their rivals, Álvarez and his co-driver, the Spanish Armand Monleón, have been optimizing their results to be at the gates of the podium of the car category without doing any outstanding results in the stages. In fact, in the last three stages he has not gone beyond ninth position.
With less media exposure, in ‘Side by Side’ or trucks the pilots who do not win stages go more unnoticed, but even so there are especially ‘silent’ riders. This is the case of Frenchman Philippe Pinchedez, third in T3 despite having a fifth place as the best stage result. In a similar vein, Gerard Farrés occupies fourth place in T4 despite not having been on the podium in any of the stages, although it is true that the Spaniard has a notorious pedigree after getting on the absolute podium of the Dakar in the motorcycle category in 2017 and on ‘Side by Side’ in 2019. In trucks and outside the KAMAZ universe, the Dutch Martin Van den Brink can approach this concept.