Monster Vitality Honda Rally Crew has been placing on a clinic on the 2024 Dakar Rally, and so they upped their ante on Tuesday as they swept the RallyGP Stage #9 podium with Adrien Van Beveren main Ricky Brabec and Pablo Quintanilla. Brabec’s runner-up end to Ross Department‘s fifth permits him to construct some extra distance between the 2, ballooning it from simply forty-two seconds after Stage #8 to over seven minutes.
The Honda trio dominated the stage as Van Beveren and Brabec led all ten waypoints with Quintanilla in tow. Van Beveren, aided by 5 and a half minutes in time bonuses after shortly catching Monday’s winner Kevin Benavides and runner-up Luciano Benavides, additionally moved previous his team-mate José Ignacio Cornejo for third total, 4 minutes behind Department. Cornejo completed seventh, stymied by an error earlier than the refuel level.
“As we speak was probably considered one of my solely pictures to make a giant push and attempt to make a bit greater hole than forty or fifty seconds so I gave it my all as we speak,” Brabec commented. “I believe tomorrow we’re in all probability going to should open but when I can clear up I believe we’ll be let loose. Within the 2020 Dakar, I pulled a spot early on and this has positively been probably the most aggravating race of my life as a result of it’s so shut. Anyway, with a couple of extra days to go, let’s hold the hopes up and hold charging.”
Technique additionally performed a essential position on the FIA facet as Crew Audi Sport hoped to place as a lot distance between their final remaining contender Carlos Sainz and his rival Sébastien Loeb, who has been on a tear in latest days. Whereas Loeb went on to assert his fourth stage win, Sainz had his team-mate Stéphane Peterhansel—who was now not in place to vie for the general win—drive alongside him as insurance coverage ought to the race go awry. Their different colleague Mattias Ekström began the stage as Monday’s winner, and he was entrusted with navigating the route forward of them in a pseudo-recce position.
This method paid off as Sainz completed second behind Loeb by 4 minutes. Though this narrows the hole, he nonetheless has a twenty-minute benefit on Loeb with three days remaining.
Mathieu Serradori joined Loeb and Sainz on the rostrum as he notched Century Racing‘s finest end of the rally, rebounding after a tumultuous race for his or her manufacturing facility programme. Conversely, Nasser Al-Attiyah‘s nightmare continued when his engine failed but once more after finishing a single kilometre; Prodrive had labored extra time to exchange the motor, the earlier mannequin having blown on Monday. A annoyed Al-Attiyah commented after the stage, “I don’t wish to leap once more on this automotive.”
Vaidotas Žala, a former Prodrive competitor, was additionally not secure from engine failures when his Mini blew up. Vladas Jurkevičius, who races a Toyota Hilux like Al-Attiyah’s previous journey, had a damaged driveshaft simply twenty kilometres in.
Even the decrease classes weren’t secure. In SSV, the final two days’ victor João Ferreira suffered mechanical issuses at first of the leg which his fellow Can-Am Cristiano de Sousa Batista capitalised upon. Elsewhere, Nicolás Cavigliasso and Gert Huzink gained their first phases of 2024 in Challenger and Truck, respectively.
