Pablo Quintanilla has set the fastest time on the six kilometres 2023 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge prologue in Al Dhannah with Adrien Van Beveren second and Toby Price third.
After the warm-up, the real competition for the second round of the 2023 World Rally Raid Championship starts tomorrow with the first stage connecting the city of Al Dhannah and Qasr Al Sarab – with a total of 404 kilometres. There will be first a 59 kilometres liaison to reach the start of the Special Stage. The 242 km on the stopwatch will be composed of 43% of dunes, 52% of sandy tracks, 4% of chott and 1% of tarmac. The first bike will start at 8am in the morning.
“Prologue went really well, it was a short one but a very technical track,” Quintanilla said, “The feeling was good. We started from behind and there were a lot of lines in the curves. Sometimes it was quite tricky to go, but I managed to do a good prologue. Now I have a good position for tomorrow so we will keep pushing to keep our lead.”
Adrien Van Beveren is well aware that the prologue does not factor much bit was happy to get his tyres in the sand and get going.
“Today I felt good on my Honda CRF 450 Rally and I am happy with my prologue. This was just a short warmup so now we have five more days of racing and I am looking forward to it,” Adrien Van Beveren said.
Toby Price said, “Interesting prologue, ran it in with a 3rd.
Big thanks to all the team here for the hard work, now it’s up to me to do the work on the track.”
