MADRID, 3 One. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish rider Joan Barreda (Honda) has won this Monday in the motorcycle category in the second stage of the Dakar Rally, a 338-kilometer special between Hail and Al Artawiyah, while Carlos Sainz (Audi) has been able to make up for what happened the day before finishing third in cars on a day dominated by Frenchman Sébastien Loeb (BRX).
The Spaniard, who finished the first stage seventeenth, thus signs his 28th triumph in the toughest raid in the world and becomes the Spaniard with the most stage victories in the motorcycle category, breaking the tiebreaker with Jordi Arcarons.
After him, the British Sam Sunderland (GasGas), the new leader of the general classification and who finished 5:33 behind the winner, and the Argentine Kevin Benavides (KTM) concluded. Despite the victory, Barreda closes the ‘Top 10’ of the provisional classification of the rally at 20:25 of the English.
In cars, Sainz left behind his bad Sunday, in which a navigation error made him enter the finish line more than two hours from Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota), and managed to finish in third position on a day in which Loeb He achieved his fifteenth victory in the Dakar – the first since 2019 and the first also of the Prodrive project -, equaling his compatriots Jean-Louis Schlesser and Bruno Saby.
With a time of 3:25:00, the Frenchman, nine-time world rally champion and who pushed hard in the final stretch, crossed the finish line with a 3:28 lead over Al-Attiyah, who retains the leadership of the test with 9:16 on the French pilot. The Madrilenian, for his part, stopped the clock at 5:52 and is still far away -29º at 2:24:31 – from the top of the table.