It didn’t go too badly for the first day of action for the Monster Energy Honda Team at this year’s 2024 Dakar Rally with almost all our riders in the top 20. It was an unlucky situation for Skyler as he had a little crash and broke some parts on the bike, so he couldn’t ride as well as he wanted to. The rest of the riders are all in a good spot for tomorrow which is important for stage one, so today has been a good start for the team.

It was not an easy prologue, there were many lines, it was sandy, bumpy, some sections were tricky and I got confused with one note so lost a few seconds. It’s important to start the prologue without crashing or with any big issues so for me it went well. I also have a good start position for tomorrow when we start the real race with longer stages, so I’m happy with the day.

It’s just the prologue but I’m happy to get through that and start the rally. We’ll see how everyone chooses their position for tomorrow and hopefully we’ll start in a good spot. The prologue wasn’t technical, but it wasn’t easy, the navigation was a little bit tricky, trickier than you would think going through all these canyons. It’s only the prologue so finishing a minute and 20 seconds out is not a big deal.

This prologue was really not a good start for me, the organisation likes to play a bit with some things and they had some sticks that we were supposed to go through. There were so many lines going through each way throughout the open desert that it was hard to see these sticks, I cut across to go through them, hit a big camel grass that was obviously off track and had a really big crash, but luckily I was OK.  I damaged the bike, lost quite a bit of time and it was hard to ride afterwards as I’d also damaged the road book so I had to rely on following the tracks.  

Then later on in the stage there was a tricky note, obviously I had no road book to verify so I was more or less going around in circles just trying to figure it out.  Finally I validated the way point and was able to continue on but I lost about five minutes today which is super frustrating and an annoying way to start the race like this. 

For the first day it was like a mini stage, not a usual prologue where you have the lines and you follow a track. There was more navigation, a lot of notes in the road book and I realised we had to focus on that and keep pushing at the same time. The lines of the guys in front of us made it a bit confusing at times because they were not always going in a good direction. It was a busy stage but I’m happy, the bike is going really well and we’re going to be ready for the push tomorrow.

I felt really good in the prologue, it was longer than expected with more navigation and it was 100% sand too.  Of course we have to keep our feet on the ground because the main race starts tomorrow, so I will keep focused on that and keeping thinking about the Dakar.