In the face of adversity, Joan Barreda thrives like few at the Dakar Rally. In stage four, barely two days after breaking the big toe on his left foot, he seemed to ignore the pain in his limb to melt the stopwatch and tighten the screws on his rivals. The man from Castellón, who with his 29th stage win is close to the absolute record in the motorcycle category shared by Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Despres (33), won a large part with a time of 4:28:18 that allows him to make up for lost ground previous special.
Victory was in the air for a long time as FIM stewards had to assess how much time to give back to Chilean Jose Ignacio Cornejo, who stopped to help the injured Joaquim Rodrigues and had options to win the stage. The organization initially reported that he stopped “for 25 minutes” to attend to his colleague, but a check of GPS data revealed he only stopped for seven and a half minutes.
The 39-year-old pilot used his good starting position – starting fifth – to follow the overall best, gaining plenty of time on a stage with lots of sand and navigation traps. A technical issue for Mason Klein, who had to stop for 10 minutes to fix his bike’s fuel pump, knocked him out of the standings and allowed Barreda to move up one place in the standings. He is now fourth, 4:30 behind the leader, a Daniel Sanders who, despite the bonuses for the lead, lost 4:07 with him at the finish line and two more minutes due to a penalty.
The stage proposed by the organization had a bit of everything, with gravel tracks and narrow passes between mountains, but also dunes and sand, a more favorable area for the Torreblanca rider. “I’m super happy to be able to go out there and see that I can push and still manage a bit with the pain,” said Barreda, pleased that the pain in his foot hasn’t gotten worse. One of his main concerns was gear changes, which require the use of his injured finger: “You have to live with the pain, get used to it, try to compensate somehow. When it hurts the most when I switch tips. I try to put my foot further forward, step in with my whole foot, and that makes it easier for me.”
To try and compete with less pain, Barreda borrowed a left boot from his motorhome partner, Chilean Pablo Quintanilla, who wears a size up and is second on the stage by 16 seconds. So you better fit the necessary bandage to keep your finger tight and in place with this emergency solution. As for the mechanics, he also worked on a modified shifter to hit it less hard.
Despite the heavy downpour that forced the third stage to be halted and flooded the camp at Ha’il, the fourth timed session was played normally with no route changes. In a tough Dakar with many script twists, another of those related to two wheels had to go. Joaquim Rodrigues, a Portuguese rider and Team HERO’s first stage winner last year, fell at 90km and was hospitalized with trauma to his left leg. Lorenzo Santolino (Sherco) was ninth in the special, 10m26 behind his compatriot, a result that puts him within the top ten of the general classification (11th with 28m37). The win makes Barreda the second rider to have at least one stage win in 12 consecutive editions, just behind the thirteen managed by Jordi Arcarons between 1990 and 2002.
Loeb retaliates with a stage win
Sébastien Loeb, nine-time World Rally Champion (WRC), took revenge after all sorts of catastrophes at the start of the Dakar with a stage win on the fourth special stage. The Bahrain Raid Extreme rider finished the day in 4h11m34s and claimed his 17th Dakarian victory, although his ambitions to win the general classification are severely diminished, 1h33m43s behind leader Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota).
Despite the fact that he ended up with mechanical problems – he lost power steering with 20km to go – the Frenchman snatched victory from Monsieur Dakar, who was 13 seconds from his 50th victory in his rally, a number that should would place him at the level of Ari Vatanen as the most successful driver in the car as well. Audi’s good moment was confirmed by both Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz, third in Wednesday’s qualifying session, 1m 50s behind the winner. The Madrid native, now fourth overall, is looking to attack and come back after suffering two punctures and a breakdown in stage three. On another tough day, another puncture and slightly under-inflation bothered him a little, although he did shave 16 seconds off his closest rival, a tiny scratch given the 32:55 that still separates him from Qatar. Yazeed Al Rhaji, second at 18:18, and Peterhansel, third at 18:52, are also ahead of him on the table.
“Luckily it rained because we didn’t find any dust, but we found a lot of cars. But overall happy. I would have liked to have been able to recover more, but we didn’t manage to do that,” analyzed Sainz. “I attack. I’ve been attacking since Tuesday, all stages are crucial for me,” he added, adding that he was behind in the overall standings. He won’t be eliminated, he admits, but he doesn’t want them to continue passing stages without reducing distances with the final destination.
Argentina’s Orlando Terranova, Loeb’s partner in the BRX and co-driver to Barcelona’s Alex Haro, was forced to turn back and return to the bivouac just 20km into the special. The pilot sustained an injury to the T4 and T5 vertebrae after hitting the ground violently after a jump on Tuesday’s stage and must now check with medical services if he can continue.
Follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.