Marko Hanželic
The ninth stage of this year Dakar Rally took place in a loop around the city Neom. The terrain in northern Saudi Arabia is very diverse, making for one of the most turbulent stages this year’s Dakar. In total, the competitors had to cover 579 kilometers, of which they were on 465 kilometers time scale.
Among the motorcyclists, two of the main favorites said goodbye. Australian Toby Price, which took place yesterday heroically tackled the problems with the rear tire, fell badly today and ended up competing. He was airlifted to hospital, where he was found to be more serious injured his left shoulder.
A good hundred kilometers later, a similar fate befell the Argentine Luciano Benavides, who also injured his shoulder in the fall and was also taken by helicopter to a hospital in Tabruk. On the other hand, the stage ended much better for his brother Kevina, who got the stage and today the runner-up Cornejo pinched a good minute and a half.
Adrien van Beveren (Yamaha) finished third behind the Honda duo. Austrian Matthias walkner (KTM) landed in fourth place, Joan Barreda however, he rounded out the top five. A brat was 23 minutes behind at the finish line, Sunderland and 26, but they were later stripped of much of the backlog because they helped the injured Price. Brabec was officially second with a minute and 18 seconds behind Benavides and Sunderland fourth.
The only Slovenian representative, Simon Marčič, coped well with the ninth stage and, despite some navigation problems, ended up in 54th place. In the classification Original by Motul is in excellent condition fifth place.
In total, he has Ignatius Cornejo now eleven minutes and 24 seconds ahead of Kevin Benavides, is the third Sam sunderland, which is just under fifteen minutes behind.
He is among motorists "Monsieur Dakar", as the nickname of Stephane Peterhansel (Mini Buggy) celebrated his first stage victory this year and an advantage over Nasser Al-Attiyah increased to seventeen minutes and 50 seconds. The stage started badly again for the Frenchman’s teammate and last year’s winner Carlos Sainz, who lost more than twenty minutes due to a punctured tire. Later, the same incident happened to him again.
It looked good for a long time Mathieu Serradori (Century), who was leading less than a hundred kilometers before the end of the stage, but had to stop and the victory went to Peterhansel. "Today's stage was anything but easy," he said peterhansel. “We saw it was going to be a long day. So we made a conscious decision not to attack, but to focus on caring for the tires and navigating. ”
Tomorrow the rally continues south of Neoma do Al-'Ula. It's on the agenda 583 kilometers through a hilly, diverse landscape. Navigation will be a big challenge again.
