Dakar stage 9: Honda fight back to close gap on Coma

After their disastrous stage 8 of the 2015 Dakar where long time race leader Joan Barreda saw his hope of victory end, the HRC team have hit back in style winning the stage and securing four of the top five places.

Helder Rodrigues took his second stage win of this years race with an accomplished performance that saw him take 5h 5m 14s to complete the 451km timed special.

Rodrigues said: ““The stage was great. In the beginning there was a lot of sand. I pushed a lot at the beginning and had to concentrate a lot to navigate well. At refueling I saw I had got a good time. I pushed a little bit then I saw Paulo catch up with me. I waited a little bit so I didn’t kick up too much dust for him, so he passed me but then he got lost. I found the way point first and I finished here with a good time. Yesterday was very hard for us and today was just fun and the aim was to just get to the finish. The stage was very hard but compared to yesterday it was nothing”.

Rodrigues took victory over HRC team-mate Paulo Goncalves who in turn closed the gap to race leader Marc Coma in the overall standings.

Goncalves said: “I’m here to give my best, to fight day-by-day. Today, it was a really difficult stage again and in the middle I missed a way point and so I turned back to find it. I lost some time there, but after I started pushing again. In the end I finished well and I recovered some time from yesterday. So now I’m second overall, but this is not really important because we have four days more in front of us to race. Many things can happen. I will try and I will keep fighting, me and team HRC, to get the best overall position possible. The strategy is to try and keep the bike safe, only that”.

Coma finished the stage in third place onboard his factory KTM, but saw his advantage reduced to just 5m 18 seconds with four stages still to run.

“Today it was not easy in the morning. It was foggy and I made a small navigation mistake. Then I had to push during the whole stage to come back to my rhythm. It was a good day after a tough day like yesterday, so today was a better day. At the moment, everything is still far off, so we’re looking at the next day only and we will see. There’s a long way still in front of us, so we’ll take it step by step”.

Father and son pairing Simon and Llewelyn Pavey have had another eventful day. Llewelyn broke down early in the day which necessitated his team coming out onto the liaison to fix the bike. Riding together the two men refused to give up finishing the stage in a highly credible 65th and 66th position. The result means they currently hold 60th and 58th places respectively with four stages to go.

1, Helder Rodrigues, POR, Honda, 5 hours 05.14
2, Paulo Goncalves, POR Honda at 3.51
3, Marc Coma, ESP, KTM at 7.34
4, Joan Barreda, ESP, Honda at 19.47
5, Javier Pizzolito, ARG, Honda at 20.07
6, Stefan Svitko, SVK, KTM at 21.40
7, Matthias Walkner, AUT, KTM at 22.02
8, Toby Price, AUS, KTM at 23.09
9, Pablo Qunitanilla, CHI, KTM 23.15
10, Olivier Pain, FRA, Yamaha at 28.09

Provisional Overall Standings after Stage 9
1, Coma at 34:05.00
2, Goncalves at 5.28
3, Qunitanilla at 26.52
4, Price, at 31.31
5, Svitko, at 40.36
6, Faria, at 1:31.26
7, Casteu, at 1:31.26
8, Sanz at 1:54.37
9, Jakes, at 2:18.31