Brabec strengthens his lead in the overall standings after stage eight

It was a very good day for us, we’re still leading with Ricky and he increased the gap to Ross Branch. Nacho did a really good job taking the bonuses on the stage and it gave him the opportunity to recover time to Ricky and Ross as he gets ever closer to them in the overall standings.
Adrien is a little bit further behind in fourth but he’s still very close to a podium position, we’ll see what he can do in the next few days to make up the difference.
Even with the problems Pablo has had in the last days we’re happy that he’s still in the race. Now he can help his teammates should they have any issues that arise over the coming stages.
Tomorrow is stage nine and although it looks really difficult our riders are in good shape to tackle it, so we’ll see what happens.

I honestly didn’t feel so good today and felt that I couldn't ride with much confidence. The first part had some sandy sections with dunes and some of the drops were difficult to see. When you don't feel so confident then you go slower so I'm glad I got to the end of the stage.

I didn’t want to start too far away from Ross tomorrow so I had to play a little bit of cat and mouse with him. I caught him early on so stuck with him all day, then at the refuelling point I saw some times and I was winning. I let Ross take over and open the way to the finish line as we had to play smart today and I didn’t want him starting behind me tomorrow. It was still a good day to finish seventh and I’ll continue to have fun out there.

I had a good stage today even though it was tricky, it was easy to make big mistakes so it was a case of trying to ride safely and smoothly. I lost just a little bit of time today but I have a good starting position for tomorrow which should help for stage nine.

I was riding well and I felt good on my bike but I had to make a choice when I checked the times of my competitors at the refuelling point. I had to make a calculation to slow up as I didn’t want to pay the price by starting up front tomorrow. Even though I did this I still finished third so I don’t think it was the best choice in the end. I’m not happy to throw away a stage victory in this way as it’s not a good feeling, but let’s see if we can make some difference over the next days.