On the longest day of the Desafío Ruta rally it was Adrien Van Beveren that took the spoils on a nail-biting stage two as he also took the lead in the overall standings.
Skyler Howes had his best stage with second while Sebastian Bühler rounded out the top three.
From the off riders were on the tail of Sebastian Bühler, who once again took the lead early on in the stage. What he didn’t expect was the Honda freight train behind him and 100 km into the special just a minute separated them all. As the riders ventured away from the winding mountain tracks it was Van Beveren that was finding his rhythm, the Frenchman eating into Bühler’s advantage bringing it down to just a single second, before drawing level in time at 232 km into the stage.
As the action got going again after the refuelling stop, Van Beveren had one thing in his sights and that was to rack up his fourteenth World Rally-Raid Championship stage win and he sailed to the finish of the 423 km special with just 27 seconds seconds separating him and second placed Skyler Howes.
“We had twisty tracks at the beginning and I really enjoyed riding the bike in these conditions and then it was really fast towards the end with a lot of straights. Today was a good day for me but we still have three days to go, so I’ll continue to fight for the lead,” Van Beveren said.
Howes had struggled the past two days with the super slippery conditions, but today put in a stellar ride in the closing kilometres, the desert terrain propelling him from sixth to second quickest and also made time up in the overall standings to sit in fifth.
“It was a long day, super fast and I spent a lot of time on the speed limiter, but it was a good stage after the refuelling where we got into more desert terrain which I was really happy about as it started looking a lot more like home,” Howes explained. “I’m happy to get here to San Juan because it’s more desert, more difficult navigation and the terrain will be a bit more open and less slippery. I felt a lot better today and went a little bit faster.”
Also enjoying the changes in terrain, Pablo Quintanilla had plenty of positives to take from his performance on the second stage running most of the day in third, but a late speeding penalty dropped him to eighth.
With Ricky Brabec and Tosha Schareina having the tricky task of opening the stage due to their 1-2 finish yesterday, they also kept in touching distance of Van Beveren. A fourth place for Schareina leaves him just 10 seconds behind the Frenchman and Brabec is a further two minutes back as the Honda riders keep a firm grip on the overall podium.
“At the beginning, I realised that the stage was really really fast and after the refuelling I tried to push in the last 200km. I think fourth place was expected after setting off second today and that puts me in a good position for tomorrow,” Schareina said.
Daniel Sanders finished eleventh on the stage and now sits in the same position overall. Sanders Australian compatriot Toby Hederics finished stage two fifteenth for his best result so far and now moves up a few spots in the overall to fifteenth.
At the halfway point of the rally, they’ll head out on a northern loop from San Juan where a total 478km of riding will feature a mixture of gravel, chott and sand.
STAGE REPORTS:
Prologue Report:
Stage 1: Report
Full Overall Results Can Be Found Here
