It’s a thrilling end to the 2024 Desafío Ruta 40 as Ricky Brabec takes victory!
Desafio Ruta 40Just 15 seconds separated the 2024 Dakar winner Ricky Brabec and Tosha Schareina after 18 hours of rallying through Argentina in what was a mammoth battle to the finish aboard their Honda CRF450 RALLY machines.
Ricky took Honda’s 10th win at the Argentine Desafio Ruta 40 Rally as Honda took a 1-2-3 clean sweep of the podium, the first manufacturer to do so in World Rally-Raid Championship history as the Monster Energy Honda Team won every stage of the rally.
The culmination of the rally today was hotly contested between the American and the Spaniard with Brabec starting the stage 1’27” ahead in the overall standings this morning with Tosha the first to get into the action on the 218 km stage; as the defending champion the Spaniard was going to put in a valiant effort to reclaim the spoils. He instantly clawed back time over the early parts of the stage cutting Brabec’s lead to just 22 seconds at one point leaving the final 100km run to the finish to be the focus of the entire rally as the finish came across the horizon at Cordoba.
Schareina sped across the finish line to take his second consecutive stage win of the week adding to his prologue win but it wasn’t quite enough to hold off Brabec who with a 1’12” gap kept hold of the overall lead and took victory. After only contending the jewel in the crown for Rally Raid Dakar Rally so far this year, it means Brabec has taken two victories out of two starts in 2024.
Adrien Van Beveren completed another the fourth Honda podium lockout of a Desafio Ruta 40 stage in 2024 after a consistently high performance all week which saw the Frenchman take a stage win and a third place on the final podium as once more confirmed the speed of the Honda CRF450 RALLY.
Skyler Howes had an outside chance for a podium finish and although he put in a flawless ride finished the day in sixth which put him fourth overall to make it his highest ever finish for Honda. Pablo Quintanilla had some struggles during the week with the differing terrain and difficult navigation but he had a positive final day to cross the line in fifth as he rounded out the five Monster Energy Honda Team riders to be in the top six of the overall standings.
In the World Rally-Raid Championship standings Ricky Brabec has propelled himself up to second, just nine points behind the leader Ross Branch with Adrien Van Beveren a further seven points back. Meanwhile, in the manufacturer standings Honda are back on top as the championship battle hots up heading into the Rallye du Maroc in October.
It has been an amazing rally for the Monster Energy Honda Team with our riders taking the top four spots and sixth overall. I’m really happy with the whole team, they did a really good job and it was a great performance by the riders on the Honda CRF450 RALLY, which performed superbly throughout the week to bring us this fantastic result at the end. I’d like to thank all the team for the amazing job that they’ve done, all the people in Japan that work on the bike and the riders too.
Finally we got to the end of a tough rally, it was different from last year with less desert but more WRC style stages. I’ve been really motivated, this rally helped me to find a good setup of my Honda CRF450 RALLY and I’ll continue to work hard on the setup up the bike for the last round and hopefully have a good result there.
It’s been a big final week, it’s been stressful but it’s good to be back. The team rode really well, the mechanics did a good job and so I think we’re in great shape heading to Morocco. It was a great day, although it was stressful as I didn’t want to lose all the time I’d made up and Tosha put some time on me today as he’s good at this road style rallying and I’m not the best at it. But I tried my best to not lose too much time and in the end everything came out pretty well. This has been a really good confidence booster moving forward and so I’ll be happy to get home and do some more testing with the bike and make it another level better. The Honda CRF450 RALLY is doing its job and we’re all happy with the bike.
I had a simple job today which was to not lose a lot of time although I think for me to have a shot of the podium was going to be a tough job. So I just brought it home to the finish but typically got some trees to the face which is not awesome, but it feels good to get it to the end of the stage with no real drama. It’s been a tough year for me so to come out here and get a fourth place is something I’m really excited about.
I’ve enjoyed riding this rally, it’s been really nice as we’ve had a variety of terrain during the week so it’s been fun. I’m happy with my riding and been enjoying it so much so it’s good to get on the podium.
Today I had to go all in and I was fighting until the end as I tried to push to make up the time. I got to one minute ten seconds behind Ricky in the standings but it was still not enough for the victory. I’m super happy for myself and the team, we did a Honda 1-2-3 and I’m made up for Ricky too.
Provisional Standings after Stage 5
Pos. | Rider | Num | Nation | Team | Constructor | Time/Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | BRABEC Ricky | 9 | USA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | 18:08:37 |
2 | SCHAREINA Tosha | 68 | SPA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 00:15 |
3 | VAN BEVEREN Adrien | 42 | FRA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 05:33 |
4 | HOWES Skyler | 10 | USA | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 12:58 |
5 | EVAN BRANCH Ross | 16 | BWA | Hero Motorsports Team Rally | Hero | + 14:57 |
6 | QUINTANILLA Pablo | 7 | CHI | Monster Energy Honda Team | Honda | + 23:55 |
