The Empty Quarter continues to reveal its identity. The immense desert that plays host to most of the oil deposits exploited in Saudi Arabia is also a special playground for rally-raid riders and drivers to express themselves. The expanses of dunes discovered by the Dakar this year have few equivalents on the surface of the planet.
However, the 185-km programme for the special was not restricted to the tricky exercise of overcoming the dunes, because when the route crossed the chotts it allowed the competitors to push the pace of their vehicles to the limits. It was certainly thanks to his technique acquired in the dunes of the Atacama Desert in Chile that Nacho Cornejo achieved the day’s victory on his bike. Sébastien Loeb, who put in another faultless performance among the mountains of sand made the difference thanks to his great strength: he goes for it like nobody else.Toby Price has not progressed as quietly as it seems since the start, given that he won the prologue at Sea Camp. Nonetheless, the Australian has remained calmly ready to pounce until it was time to take over, a task which he carried out without a fanfare, thanks to the third best time on the day’s special, though such understatement should not disturb him too much since he has proved himself to be an ultra-credible winner with three days to go.
The pressure has been cranked up a notch. After a long stay by Skyler Howes on top of the general rankings, in a scenario which briefly also saw Mason Klein dominate the category, now one of the “old hands” has taken command of the Dakar.
Price will need all his experience and composure to successfully complete this rush towards Dammam, with a lead of only 28’’ over Skyler Howes and 2’40’’ over his team-mate Kevin Benavides. The taste of victory is becoming more distinct for KTM, which had not placed an orange bike on top of the podium since Price’s victory in 2019.
The Honda team will have savoured the taste of stage success enjoyed by Nacho Cornejo on the way back to Shaybah, but it will no doubt be somewhat bittersweet in light of the slump by Adrien Van Beveren (to 5th, more than 16 minutes from the lead), even if provisional 4th place went to his team-mate Pablo Quintanilla, who trails the leader by 14’54’’.
Focus: Mason Klein
For his second Dakar, there were great expectations for Mason Klein, who was the best rookie in 2022 with a 9th-placed finish at the tender age of 20-years-old. For his debut in the RallyGP class this year, the BAS World KTM Racing privateer rider, who is the Austrian’s protégé, left his mark by taking command of the general rankings on stage one.
Some observers could already sense a phenomenon who was going to defy all the statistics concerning precociousness on the race. At the rest day, the kid was in 3rd place in the general rankings, forcing other onlookers who had only seen him as a flash in the pan to adjust their opinions. However, the start of the second week of racing brought the prodigy back to earth with a bump, and quite literally: Mason fell twice on stage 9.
The entrance into the Empty Quarter went untroubled the following day, but over the last two days it has, quite like the lie of the land, been ups and downs for Mason, as the dunes have given his neck a rough time. An X-ray at the bivouac on completion of the marathon stages did not reveal anything abnormal with the kid, but the ocean of sand plunged rider number 9 into 42nd place on the day. This evening, Klein is 10th in the general rankings. He has taken the decision to tackle the sea of dunes again tomorrow, despite the stormy outcome for him, in order to reach the Arabian Gulf, as he experiences the first bump in the road on his meteoric rise.