Dakar Rally continues to be a tough puzzle to crack for most of the riders for the third successive day here on Tuesday.
With rocky terrains and dust not enough, the navigation proved to be tricky for everyone as a particular waypoint created a lot of confusion for the riders, and many took a lot of time to find it.
The Hero MotoSports Team Rally riders, too, found the going quite difficult, but they seem to be getting the hang of it.
The best rider for Hero turned out to be Sebastian Buhler.
He had a really consistent run to finish on 26th position in the stage and 22nd overall as per the provisional rankings.
The best rider for Hero the other day, Paulo Goncalves had a technical issue. He stopped at the 30th km as the bike didn’t start that forced him to spend time - around 5 hours - to sort out the issue. At the time of filing report, it is learnt that he hasn’t finished the race.
C.S. Santosh braved a wrist injury and tough conditions to finish 51st.
Joaquim Rodrigues whose results won’t have any bearing on the overall results rode without any pressure to finish 17th.
Buhler was quite happy with his finish. “I enjoyed today’s race a lot. It has a very fast nice tracks and the bike was also running perfectly. At around 400km, there was a waypoint that was very difficult to find. A lot of riders got confused and lost time. I think I am riding good and hope to continue in the same way.”
Santosh said he was hopeful of finding a good rhythm in the coming days. “Today was a long stage full of dust. There were mini-canyons that were really dusty but after that the track really opened up and I got into a good rhythm. Just before the refuelling point, I lost my point a bit and lost some time in getting back on track. I made a few mistakes today but happy to make it to the finish.”
Stage four on Wednesday is not going to easy as riders have to negotiate 453 km offering equal parts of sandy stretches and gravel.
(The writer is in Saudi Arabia on the invitation of Hero MotoCorp)
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