Dakar 2019 Stage 6: Lorenzo Crashes Out Of Dakar

Top flying rookie rider Lorenzo Santolino bowed out of the Dakar 2019, 33km into the stage. The Sherco-TVS rider was one of the breakout stars of the Dakar so far, with his best ever finish to the day coming just two days prior on stage 5. He had to be airlifted to Lima where further assessment of his injuries will take place.

The team had a day to forget with just a glimmer of hope coming from KP Aravind who rode extremely well to finish the day 42nd, climbing up quite a few spots in the overall rankings. He is currently 48th and should aim to climb a few more spots. Michael was the better of the two Metge brothers finishing the day in 31st. That did bump him down a number of positions in the overall standings, to 36th in fact, but not as much as his brother Adrien who had a miserable day at the office. Adrien ended the day at 77th spot, which has seen him plummet down the overall standings to 33rd.

Hero MotoSports had no casualties to report but their standings too were slightly hampered in the overall stage progression. Since Lorenzo’s crash, Oriol Mena has taken over as the top rider from an Indian team. He was 20th over the course of the day which has seen him slide down a spot in the overall rankings, to 13th. The day started off strongly for his teammate Joaquim Rodrigues but he stopped to help Oriol out as the latter ran his fuel tank dry. He had to rebuild the aux tank and thus finished the day in 30th. He is 25th in the overall tally now. Hero hopes both its riders will challenge for better results in the days to come.

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Husqvarna’s Pablo Quintanilla was unstoppable on stage 6, taking over the rally lead from the Hondas. Quintanilla’s advantage over Honda’s Kevin Benavides was close to two minutes at the end of the stage. It was quite tight between KTM’s Matthias Walkner and Toby Price as the hunting KTM pack were over four minutes down on Quintanilla. Yamaha’s Adrien van Beveren was fifth.

Quintanilla now holds a healthy lead of four and a half minutes over Honda’s Ricky Brabec. Just 30 seconds behind whom is Price, who is not going to make it easy for any other team to snatch victory away from KTM. Benavides’ strong performance propels him up to fourth with van Beveren and Walkner not far behind.

Although it still looks like a Herculean task, Sebastien Loeb continued to shorten the gap between him and Nasser Al-Attiyah’s in the cars category by winning the stage. Nasser was leading the day for most parts, but Loeb’s late charge saw the WRC champ ease to victory by a margin of 2 minutes 17 seconds. They were closely trailed by the Carlos Sainz in his Mini. However, Stephane Peterhansel could not close up to Nasser for the win, ending the day nearly 19 minutes off Loeb.

Despite ending the day in second, it is Al-Attiyah who has a commanding lead of 37 minutes 43 seconds over Loeb who has climbed up the order since day 5. Peterhansel has slipped down to third, as he is three and a half minutes behind Loeb. Nani Roma and Cyril Despres complete the top five.

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Dakar 2019 Stage 2: Report

Dakar 2019 Stage 1: Report