The Chilean José Ingnacio Cornejo won among the bikers, but the Australian Toby Price became the leader of the competition. However, he has a lead of only 28 seconds on second-placed Skyler Howes. Martin Michek finished 17th, he remains thirteenth in the standings.
“Seventeenth place is a bomb, the loss to the winner was only five minutes. So everyone is going full speed, completely full of blood. Today there were soft dunes, it was fast and hard to ride in them. A big kick and I’m very happy to be at the finish line. We have twelve stages, which is a small Dakar. Normally, everything would be done, but there are still two stages ahead of us. I have to make it to the finish line physically and the bike technically,” said Michek.
In the cars, Sébastien Loeb confirmed his sovereignty from the last few days. He won the stage again, moving to second overall, but Nasser al-Attija maintains a safe and huge lead of one hour and 27 minutes.
Martin Prokop lost ten minutes to Loeb and finished seventh. He is still sixth overall, 26 minutes behind fifth place Henk Lategan.
“Today was a little more difficult, because some exits were really baked and gave us a hard time. It was clear from the beginning that the day would be difficult. I probably drove too carefully, too calm pace, because Kuba Przygonski overtook us. I told myself that I won’t let my teammate like this and we started pulling. We overtook him a little before the finish line,” Prokop praised the fight on the track. “It can be seen that we can and can show something in the dunes.”
David Pabiška revealed what it looks like in the bivouac. A long line for food and open tentsVideo: David Pabiška
In the truck category, the Dutchman Janus van Kasteren won, who also leads overall. He is already 33 minutes ahead of compatriot Martin van den Brink, who had problems on the track. In the end, Martin Macík also gained more than half an hour’s deficit, who had been in second place until then. He finished fourth, although he remains third overall, but he is now an hour and 20 minutes behind Van Kaster.
“An excellent stage, really difficult and we had a wonderful ride,” described Macík. However, a non-functioning sensor on the car deprived him of a better result. “We stopped for it almost every ten or twenty kilometers. Sometimes it sputtered, it went for a while and then it didn’t go again. We had to change it about 20 kilometers before the finish line and lost a lot of time.”
But others also suffered. Right at the beginning, Jaroslav Valtr made up a loss of over two hours, and Martin Šoltys stands at roughly the 50th kilometer.
