In the Dakar Rally not everything is as it seems, and although the winner of the fourth stage of the test has a first and last name, the Australian KTM and race leader Daniel Sanders, the true winner of the day was Tosha Schareina. The 29-year-old Spanish Honda driver preferred to give up the glory of the day to have better cards on the last day before the long-awaited rest day in Hail, the finish line this Thursday after another night outdoors in the middle of the Saudi desert. . The strategy came into play in the marathon stage of the 47th edition of the rally, and in the final stretch the Valencian decided to slow down after having led more than 150 of the 415 kilometers of the special between Al Henakiyah and Al-Ula. He nailed the loss of time, as he left only 15 seconds at the finish line over the Australian, winner with a time of 5h10m33s.
“We had to be smart, not break anything and conserve the tire. I was able to catch up with Daniel after refueling, I think he had a navigation error or something. I followed him for a while, then I lost him and shortly after we were back to back. At the end of the stage I decided to give myself a couple of minutes to ride more calmly and not have to open tomorrow,” commented Schareina at the finish line, just before undertaking repairs to his motorcycle. In this case they were also timed. As it was the marathon stage, the pilots only had 30 minutes to carry out repairs on their machines without the help of the teams and mechanics, who went directly to the Hail bivouac, in the north of the country.
The Spaniard, like many others, had problems with the new digital tablet that, starting this year, replaces the traditional rolled-up paper route books. In his case, changing the charging cable solved the problem. A couple of zip ties here and there also solved the dents in the fairing. “Another 400 hard kilometers are coming, but we are prepared,” he said optimistically, perched in second place in the Dakar, 13 and a half minutes behind the Australian leader. After a day with a lot of sand and complicated navigation between canyons and always dangerous rocky sections, Sanders praised the tactics of his closest pursuer.
“We played a bit of cat and mouse towards the end, we all tried to slow down,” commented the KTM reference. “I knew that today I could gain time in the general classification, but I didn’t want to finish first and open tomorrow, since this area is complicated for navigation,” he added. Skyler Howes (Honda), Ross Branch (Hero) and Ricky Brabec, winner of the last edition with the golden wing brand, lost a lot of time and went from being less than 10 minutes on the table to close to 30 minutes lost compared to the overall leader. Although unintentionally, Sanders has already won three of the four stages held so far in the rally, in addition to the prologue. ‘Chucky’, as he is called in the caravan, is still looking for his first ‘Touareg’ after having debuted in 2021 with a magnificent fourth place overall and having had worse luck since then. Brabec summed it up perfectly at the end of the stage, chatting with his teammates: “The rally is crazy. You can have the best day of your life and in one moment ruin your entire career.”
“Right now I can focus on myself, as I already did in the Moroccan rally to win the race. I hope not to make mistakes and move forward,” said the leader. Part of the time he lost the day before, the day of Lorenzo Santolino’s victory from Salamanca, was also due to a malfunction in his digital tablet, a situation that worries competitors and generates some controversy. “Many pilots have had problems with the electronic route books these days, none of them have given us time back. I personally had problems two stages in a row and I had to follow dust and lines blindly without knowing when the dangers are coming. Today they do give time back to other affected pilots… Why do some and not others? Do you have to come from a first world country to be taken into account?” shared Chilean Nacho Cornejo, Schareina’s teammate at Honda. The Valencian was also affected by this problem in the first stage without getting any minutes back, something that did happen with Sanders, equally upset with a situation that displeases all the drivers.
