After a short prologue and a cancelled first stage, the Dakar genuinely kicked off between Villa Carlos Paz and Termas de Rio Hondo. On a quick stage without significant navigational difficulties, Toby Price was the first to leave his mark on the race with his second stage victory on the Dakar.
Battling in the provisional times throughout the special with Ruben Faria, the Australian finally made his superiority count at the end of the stage, grabbing the lead in the general standings by two seconds from his Portuguese rival. For a first attempt, Sébastien Loeb carried off a master stroke by winning his first stage on the Dakar, despite losing two minutes in the mud. The Frenchman is the star of the day and takes the lead in the car category.
With a place on the final podium on his first Dakar, Toby Price is determined to reach a new dimension on the 2016 edition. The Australian lost no time in confirming his ambitions of outright victory in Rosario by winning the first veritable stage of the rally. The KTM rider did not have an easy day however, faced with a Ruben Faria who appeared very comfortable behind the handlebars of his official Husqvarna and who spent a good part of the day at the front of the race. The Portuguese rider even managed to catch up with the start of the day’s general standings leader, Joan Barreda, who nonetheless started three minutes before him. This allows Faria to be right on Price’s tail in the general standings on Monday evening, whilst Stefan Svitko was the third man to finish the day.
Starting slower than Alain Duclos, the Slovak gradually sped up and, in the end, only lost a minute and a half to the day’s winner. As for the Sherco rider, he can be very satisfied with his start to the rally, because he beat the factory KTM ridden by Matthias Walkner and the Hondas of Paulo Gonçalves and Barreda. A very noteworthy performance was also given by Argentinean debutant Kevin Benavides, who finished the day in eighth. As for Pablo Quintanilla, he finished further back, 4’32 behind Price.
In the quad category, Ignacio Casale set out with the bit between his teeth after his disappointment of 2015. With the firm intention of adding a second Dakar to his roll of honour, the Chilean rider dominated the day’s stage to finish with a comfortable lead in the general standings.
He leads the day’s runner up Brian Baragwanath by four minutes, whilst Alejandro Patronelli made a fine return to the rally with third place at Termas de Rio Hondo. The title holder Rafal Sonik had to make do with a cautious sixth place, more than 6 minutes behind the leader.
Determined not to just make up the numbers on this Dakar, Sébastien Loeb was probably not expecting to win his first stage on the king of rally-raids. However, for a nine times WRC champion on a quick route without navigational difficulties that seemed to be tailor-made for him, not winning would have been akin to looking a gift horse in the mouth. Consequently, the man from Alsace thoroughly dominated his rivals, beating his experienced team-mate Stéphane Peterhansel by 2’23 in Termas de Rio Hondo to take control of the general standings. Nevertheless, this result was no setback for “Peter” who will surely be more comfortable than Loeb on the remainder of the rally and who has already gained valuable minutes on his main rivals.
Behind the wheel of a new Peugeot 2008 that has evidently been significantly improved, the five times winner in the car category beat Vladimir Vasilyev by fifteen seconds as well as the consistent Giniel de Villiers, both driving Toyotas.
Also of note were the fine fifth place of Loeb’s former WRC rival Mikko Hirvonen and the seventh place achieved by Cyril Despres, who confirmed both his and his car’s progress. Nasser Al-Attiyah lost precious time after a puncture, whilst Carlos Sainz had a face like thunder at the finish following an unexplained engine problem on his 2008 that cost him eleven minutes. Nonetheless, this was nothing compared to the difficulties in the mud faced by Nani Roma, who lost more than 45 minutes, or Orlando Terranova (more than 30 minutes) and Xavier Pons.
Quotes:
“At the moment it’s going perfectly”
“That was quite good news at the end because I didn’t believe it. I was stuck in the mud at the middle of the stage and was lucky to get out. I got stuck for maybe two minutes, something like that. At that moment I didn’t believe I would get out like I did. Finally, I managed to join the field again and resume the stage, but it was really on the limit so I was a bit afraid. Apart from that, I had a good stage with no problems, trying to find a good rhythm and it was ok. The gaps are not a big, big difference, I have to say, but I’m really happy about the rhythm we were able to take on this stage with this car, because I didn’t believe it was a buggy stage. The car is really performing well and I’m really happy with the result at the moment, so we have to continue. Tomorrow we will open the road and that will be another story, but at the moment it’s going perfectly. The car was ok. I just had some braking problems after the mud. When I was stuck in the mud I think my brakes got full of mud. I had to press long on the pedal and pump a lot on the corners but then it came back ok”.
“It’s good to be back”
Toby Price
“On this stage it’s all gone really good. It was a weird way to start the Dakar yesterday. We didn’t even get to run the course and everything got cancelled, so actually today kicked the Dakar off and getting going is unreal. I got through that stage pretty clean and pretty comfortable so we’re in a good position for tomorrow. It should be fairly similar to what we had today and then day four is when it kicks in with a bit of hard navigation. But we’re excited and it’s good to be back here. It was a long wait and a long stage, around 350 kilometres. We were lucky that had about fifty kilometres taken out of the section. It was a long day in the saddle but, for sure, it’s started well for us. We’re just looking forward to tomorrow now. We’ll make sure we look after the bike. There was a bit of mud out there today, so we’ll give it a good clean up and Joe will do a really good job, so we look forward to kicking it off again tomorrow. It will be a little more difficult, for sure, but we’ll take off and get going and take our time with it tomorrow to make sure we make all the right calls. Today was really easy navigation and we had a few tracks we could see, plus the route was pretty well marked. Tomorrow should hopefully be fairly similar, except for the tracks: tomorrow I’ll be making the trail. For sure, we’re excited and keen to see what the day can bring. We hope were up for the title. That’s what we’ve come to the Dakar for, to be a title contender, but you’ve got to have a perfect race go your way for the two weeks. Today was only pretty much day two, but realistically it’s day one, so we’ve got a long way to go. We’ve just got to make sure we keep cool, calm and collected. It’s good to get one stage win out of the way, but we’re looking forward to being smooth and consistent the rest of the week and see how we go”.
“You had to stay concentrated”
Giniel de Villiers
“We went pretty well. We didn’t go absolutely mad, but we tried to go at a good pace. The beginning of the stage was obviously a lot drier than we thought. I thought it was going to be much wetter, but it was fine. In the middle there was a big mud hole which was really tricky. We managed to go round but I saw a few cars that were stuck there. Other than that we had a good stage and a good run. You had to stay concentrated to stay on the road for sure, because there was a lot of rocks and things next to the road. We had a good run and I’m happy to have finished the stage. Obviously, the Peugeots are very quick on this type of stage because this is a stage where we with our four-wheel drive should be very quick. They’re obviously quick and for sure, it’s going to be a tough battle to beat them, but we’re going to try and we’ll fight until the end”.