Adrien Van Beveren shakes up the standings in Argentina
Desafio Ruta 40On the longest day of the Desafío Ruta rally it was Adrien Van Beveren that took the spoils on a nail-biting stage two as he also took the lead in the overall standings.
From the off the Monster Energy Honda Team riders were on the tail of Sebastian Bühler, who once again took the lead early on in the stage. What he didn’t expect was the Honda freight train behind him and 100 km into the special just a minute separated them all. As the riders ventured away from the winding mountain tracks it was Van Beveren that was finding his rhythm, the Frenchman eating into Bühler’s advantage bringing it down to just a single second, before drawing level in time at 232 km into the stage.
As the action got going again after the refuelling stop, Van Beveren had one thing in his sights and that was to rack up his fourteenth World Rally-Raid Championship stage win and he sailed to the finish of the 423 km special with just 27 seconds seconds separating him and second placed Skyler Howes.
The American rider had struggled the past two days with the super slippery conditions, but today put in a stellar ride in the closing kilometres, the desert terrain propelling him from sixth to second quickest and also made time up in the overall standings to sit in fifth.
Also enjoying the changes in terrain, Pablo Quintanilla had plenty of positives to take from his performance on the second stage running most of the day in third, but a late speeding penalty dropped him to eighth.
With Ricky Brabec and Tosha Schareina having the tricky task of opening the stage due to their 1-2 finish yesterday, they also kept in touching distance of Van Beveren. A fourth place for Schareina leaves him just 10 seconds behind the Frenchman and Brabec is a further two minutes back as the Honda riders keep a firm grip on the overall podium.
With the Monster Energy Honda Team now based at the next bivouac at the Circuito San Juan Villicum, they will rest up before tomorrow’s stage three. At the halfway point of the rally they’ll head out on a northern loop from San Juan where a total 478km of riding will feature a mixture of gravel, chott and sand.
It’s a good result again for the Monster Energy Honda Team. The first part of the stage was the end of yesterday’s one, so there was some damage to the tracks that the riders managed to control as they rode this section. After the refuelling it was more open and more Dakar style desert. Although Pablo finished third he had a problem with the GPS which caused the issue for his penalty. Despite this, he had a really good day on the bike. Ricky opened and lost some time which is normal and Tosha did too, but tomorrow I think it will be a difficult stage so those starting positions might help them. Adrien won, which is really great for him and his confidence and also Skyler did a really good stage as he was further back but took the fight to his teammate for a close second at the end.
It was a great day for the whole team and we want to keep this pace until the end, but we’ll take it day by day as the rally is always difficult and anything can happen.
It was a really long day with 423km of special stage and it was fast with some narrow sections in the mountains. I was feeling good and rode the stage with a really good pace, so am happy with my performance today.
It was a long day opening and a lonely day at the front, but I made no mistakes and only lost just a little bit of time as I mistakenly thought I was in a 30km/h speed zone, but it was actually 50km/h. I’m happy with how I rode though, navigation wasn’t too difficult today and with three days left there’s a lot that can happen. I’m happy to be in San Juan and looking forward to getting out in the open desert. From what I remember back in my first three Dakars, we were in this area so I’m really happy about tomorrow.
It was a long day, super fast and I spent a lot of time on the speed limiter, but it was a good stage after the refuelling where we got into more desert terrain which I was really happy about as it started looking a lot more like home. I’m happy to get here to San Juan because it’s more desert, more difficult navigation and the terrain will be a bit more open and less slippery. I felt a lot better today and went a little bit faster.
We had twisty tracks at the beginning and I really enjoyed riding the bike in these conditions and then it was really fast towards the end with a lot of straights. Today was a good day for me but we still have three days to go, so I’ll continue to fight for the lead.
At the beginning I realised that the stage was really really fast and after the refuelling I tried to push in the last 200km. I think fourth place was expected after setting off second today and that puts me in a good position for tomorrow.
RallyGP Provisional Standings after Stage 2
Pos. | Rider | Num | Nation | Team | Constructor | Time/Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | VAN BEVEREN Adrien | 42 | FRA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | 08:36:34 |
2 | SCHAREINA Tosha | 68 | SPA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 00:10 |
3 | BRABEC Ricky | 9 | USA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 02:14 |
4 | BÜHLER Sebastian | POR | Hero Motorsports Team Rally | Hero | + 02:34 | |
5 | HOWES Skyler | 10 | USA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 04:15 |
6 | EVAN BRANCH Ross | 16 | BWA | Hero Motorsports Team Rally | Hero | + 05:02 |
7 | QUINTANILLA Pablo | 7 | CHI | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 09:26 |
