It was a strong day for us. Tosha found a great rhythm early on and was able to gain time on Daniel overall. At one point, he was nearly two minutes ahead, but his bike stopped close to the finish, costing a bit of time. Still, it was a solid result and everything is to play for on tomorrow’s stage. It’s short but technical, likely to be slippery and Tosha will be fighting until the very end for the victory.
Adrien also had a consistent day, riding at a strong pace to finish third, a good result for him. His previous results haven’t always gone his way, but he’s been building confidence day by day and today was a positive step.
Skyler had a crash early on and injured his right leg, making it a tough stage for him to complete. Ricky also had a crash, but he managed to finish. The terrain isn’t what they’re most comfortable with, but they showed determination throughout.

Everyday there’s something different. We’ve been battling rain and muddy conditions all the time, but today was probably the slimiest, greasiest mud out of the whole rally so far and it made it really tricky to find the rhythm. I struggled all day to find the rhythm and the pace that I’ve had the past couple of days. Everything was off for me today, my braking points, my throttle control, my mind and it was a big struggle. After yesterday’s incident I knew I was kind of, not out of the race, but out of trying to to fight for the fourth or fifth place that I had, so today was just a kind of making it to the finish line. I had a crash again today, doing nothing. It was a slow crash, but I slid into a concrete pillar and knew I had to pick myself back up and told myself that I’m over it and hitting the ground this week.

I really didn’t have a good day, I ended up losing my front brake, 6 km into the stage and so I was really just trying to ride as smoothly as I could and do a good job, hitting my marks and I felt like I was doing OK, obviously riding slower, but then had a couple of crashes, so it just took the wind out of my sails a little bit. It was a really long day, super difficult with the greasy, slimy, slippery tracks, big giant mud holes. Man, it was a really tough, long day for me. I got my butt kicked, had a couple of big crashes, but I’m happy to make it through this one, but I’m really happy it’s over.

It was a long day on the bike, over 600 km, almost ten hours. It was good, fresh and a bit humid, but no rain on the ride. There were some puddles and the terrain was quite slippery, but I really enjoyed my day. Portugal has really good terrain, it’s completely different to what we’re used to racing on. You have to manage the slide, the grip, the different terrain. You have to read the terrain as sometimes it’s so grippy because of the rain, but at the same time it can be really slippery. It was a good day overall, I tried to be consistent and it went well.

It was a long day, I think almost ten hours on the bike from 5 in the morning to now. There was a long liaison too, it was the first day with no rain but the terrain was so muddy and so many puddles. It was good, the mission for today was win the stage, take all the possible time to Daniel, we took a minute and a half and for sure we will have a good battle tomorrow.