The Torreblanca rider is fourth, 45″ behind the leader Brabec after the first stage, despite receiving a penalty
“Tomorrow is the stage with the most rocks on the Dakar and I have to try to make it a formality for me, not make big mistakes and stay focused,” he insisted.
Joan Barreda He is fourth overall in the Dakar motorcycle classification after the first stage, in which he received a penalty for exceeding the permitted speed at a special control, losing second place. He has finally placed himself 45 seconds behind the winner, Ricky Brabec and will occupy the fourth position in the starting order of the second stage, this Monday, January 2.
This is how the Torreblanca driver explained the mistake that cost him the penalty: “At the beginning of the special on a radar that I had passed a bit… not too concentrated. In the first kilometers everything accumulated. And in the change from 50 km/h to 30 km/h I didn’t see it fast and I have penalized”.
Despite them, Barreda managed to recover: “From then on I tried to focus a little more, be more concentrated and not make mistakes. And from km 100 on I started to flow better and with better sensations. In any case, it was a tough stage, with a lot of soft sand in some areas and then an area with a lot of stones, very technical, and the truth is that despite everything it turned out to be a good day, a solid day”, he summarized. .
“These first few days it’s always harder for me and then when it’s a more open desert and faster stages, I like it a little more there. The feeling was good, I already said it before the Dakar that I had trained well, that I had covered quite a few kilometres, and the sensations I had were those. It is clear that in the end you have to see it in the race but we have been here for many years and in the end what matters most is when you have the sensations, although you have to be focused”, he added.
The 39-year-old rider from Castellón is satisfied with the fourth starting position for tomorrow: “It’s fine. Today, when we saw that many riders started from behind, all pulling very hard with small differences, in the refuelings and neutralizations we Seeing that we were all going at very close times. So it was important to stay, but there was no point in pushing hard and taking unnecessary risks to gain one more minute, because the differences were really minimal. A priori, as far as we know, the second stage It will be quite rocky. It’s something I don’t like either, but theoretically it’s the stage with the most rocks on the Dakar and in the end I have to try to make it a formality for me, not make big mistakes and stay focused”, he insisted.
“Starting ahead is clear that with such stony tracks you have to navigate at your own pace and you have to be focused on this type of stage, because in sandy stages at the end you always have tracks, but in stages with so much rock you have to be very concentrated with so much navigation and not following tracks because in the end you can get lost at any time”, settled Barreda.