After yesterday's suspension of the bikes and quads in honor of the late Paulo Gonçalves, today it's back on the road for everyone from Wadi Al-Dawasir over a marathon stage of 886 km to Haradh. Savannah terrain and treacherous rocky sections await the drivers here. Dangers for the cars lurk everywhere here.
After yesterday's suspension of the race due to the fatal accident of biker Paulo Gonçalves, the bikers have to get back in the saddles today, even if the tragic event is still in the bones of one or the other rider.
"It's hard to race after the tragedy, but the show must go on. We have to accept what is happening at the Dakar and stay focused."
says the overall leader, American Ricky Brabec. For Botswana's Ross Branch, the Dakar has been quite up and down so far. The victory of the second stage was followed by crashes or mishaps, but today he keeps the upper water again and closes on the 5th stage position. The leader Ricky Brabec again put in a solid ride, even though he was beaten by almost four minutes in the end and finished in fourth place. He still needs three days to celebrate a historic victory as an American rider. Ricky Brabec's teammate, Spaniard Joan Barreda, is a touch faster and rides to third stage place. Toby Price, who was still trying to help Gonçalves on Sunday, is doing everything he can today to keep KTM in the race. The day's winner is Chilean Pablo Quintanilla, who takes his first stage win and makes up some ground on Ricky Brabec. "It was hard to find the right rhythm at the beginning of the race, but I felt better the longer I rode, I was able to push and in the end I won the stage and I'm happy about it and I dedicate it to Paulo Gonçalves.
For the cars, today means punctures and tire changes on an endlessly long route through rocky terrain and savannahs. This also affects Giniel de Villiers, who is hampered in his driving. Often enough responsible for the breakdowns is also a wrong setup in the suspension or simply a driving mistake like with Honda driver Ronan Chabot, who shatters the entire front left suspension when he hits a rock, which means the race is over for him. After yesterday's dive, two-time Dakar winner and current leader Carlos Sainz is able to keep up again and closes in 5th place on the stage with a gap of around 6 minutes. After the race the veteran said:
"It was a bad day, in the first section we got lost and lost certainly 5 minutes unnecessarily and in the second section we had problems with the tires, which just disintegrated."
Nasser Al-Attiyah was able to use Sainz's weakness as an opportunity to repeatedly claim second place. Once again, Stéphane Peterhansel came out on top today, winning a stage at the 2020 Dakar for the third time.
"It was a good special stage for us, we drove with the knife between our teeth and tried to drive at the same pace from start to finish"
replied the 13-time Dakar winner in an interview after the race.
As a result, Nasser caught up to 24 seconds and Peterhansel to around 6 minutes on the leader Carlos Sainz.
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