Cornejo doubles up on stage 4 of the Dakar Rally to make a Monster Energy Honda Team one-two finish with Brabec

We’ve got to the bivouac in Al-Hofuf at the end of stage four with Nacho and Ricky doing a really good job today coming first and second and Adrien is also on the pace and not too far off the front runners. Pablo lost a little bit of time today which is disappointing, but there are a lot of stages still to come so everything can change.  Skyler did a good job at the beginning of the stage but he had some issues and also lost a bit of time.  The team is strong and we will keep on fighting to achieve our main goal.

Today was a super tough stage for me. We left a river bed and I saw some workers with a big truck parking up which didn’t seem right.  I thought that I wasn’t going in the right direction and so I went back to search for the route. Toby (Price) arrived and he was in the same predicament.  Finally we went back in the direction of the truck and the correct way was behind it.  I got confused because of the workers and the truck so I didn’t think it was possible to go that way.  

It is what it is, we are still in the race so now we need to be focused again, get rest and go on the attack tomorrow. 

Stage four was good, it was the shortest one yet so I was happy to have a shorter day.  We’re at the bivouac an hour earlier than we have been, so that’s also nice and it gives the mechanics some more time to work on the bikes.  I was second on the road which definitely wasn’t easy as navigation is really tricky this year.  It can catch you off guard quickly, so if you’re not on your toes from sunrise to sunset then it really can throw you.  

Tomorrow’s stage five is a sand dune day, it’s a short one but it’ll be long day in the saddle with the liaison.  It’s going to be an interesting next three days, everyone in the team is doing a great job and I’m looking forward to getting to the end of this rally. 

I’m becoming more and more confident with the bike, we’ve made a few little changes to the suspension and to some other positive adjustments.  I had a small mechanical issue which slowed me down and I also had to search for a hidden waypoint which lost me some time. 

The pace and riding was good and it was overall another positive day.  I do prefer the previous stages as there’s more stones, rocky canyons and technical navigation, once you get into the dunes it’s almost like a motocross race, you push really hard and you just follow the compass.

It was a good stage, it was a mix of terrains and they did say it would be a little bit easier.  It felt faster and not as physical as the previous days, but there were some sections of tricky navigation so I had to stay focused.  I did some little mistakes at the beginning but then I pushed harder with a good solid pace and finished in a positive way. Tomorrow we start with the dunes so let’s see how it goes.  

We’ve had two good days, I feel really good on the bike and the rhythm is good now.  I feel happy as I’m enjoying my riding, although today it was bit more stony so I enjoyed it a little bit less than yesterday.  We had some dunes at the end which was fun and there are more to come tomorrow.  The goal was to get back on the overall classification and I’m now fifth and not far off the front, so everything is possible to get back that time.