Fight to the last kilometer – Sport – Kommersant

The most prestigious Dakar rally-raid in the world, which ended today, pleased the fans with a rare denouement in terms of intensity. It happened in the motorcycle category, where Kevin Benavidez and Toby Price were separated by only 43 seconds at the finish line. In the other two key standings – SUVs and trucks – there were no surprises. In the category “cars” Nasser Al-Attiyah, who took the lead at the beginning of the race, confidently issued his fifth title. Janus van Kasteren won the first victory in his career among the trucks, delivered by order of the hegemony of the KamAZ-Master team.

The outcome of the Dakar in Saudi Arabia in the motorcycle category turned out to be worthy of a screenplay. Throughout the entire distance, none of the motorcycle racers managed to secure a decisive advantage for themselves, such that they could already calmly work on its preservation, and therefore each stage received a special tournament weight. The largest went to the last stage. Usually they don’t decide anything, the caravan just serves its number, but then two Dakar champions representing KTM “battled”: 2021 rally winner Kevin Benavidez and two-time Dakar champion (2016, 2019) Toby Price. Before the decisive stage, Price was ahead of Benavidez by 12 seconds. This is so small that it cannot even be called a gap in the full sense of the word. So it all came down to a face-to-face confrontation between the Argentinean and Austrian riders at one single stage. And it seemed that Price would have an advantage here. In the course of the entire race, in pure speed, he was slightly faster. But Benavidez gave a simply flawless performance, beating his opponent in the last stage by 55 seconds. That is, his lead over Price in the overall standings was only 43 seconds! “Amazing. To snatch victory at the Dakar in such a confrontation is simply insane,” said Benavidez after the finish. The Argentine won his first title on a Honda.

In the most prestigious category – SUVs – there was nothing like motorcycle madness. In fact, the fate of the title was determined after the first half of the raid, when Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota) separated from his closest pursuers in an hour. Then the nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Lob gave an amazing, record-breaking series of six consecutive stages won, but it was clear that if only Al-Attiya did not get into trouble, nothing shines for the Frenchman. Actually, he himself admitted this already after the finish (Lob, who took second place, was 1 hour 20 minutes and 49 seconds behind the winner), noting that Al-Attiya brilliantly, extremely reliably covered the entire distance, which was the key to his victory. The champion himself congratulated himself on his fifth title won at Dakar. Cooler than him now is only the “Mr. Dakar” Stefan Peterhansel himself. The Frenchman has eight victories in the SUV class and six more in the motorcycle class.

In the truck class, the main one for Russian fans, due to the long-term hegemony of the KamAZ-Master team, two factors influenced the determination of the winner. The first is the actual ban on the Russian team from participating in the race due to the position taken by the International Automobile Federation after the start of events in Ukraine. By and large, only this opened the way to the trophy for someone not from the Chelny “stable”. The second is the refusal of Alyosha Loprais to continue the struggle, dictated by emotions. Until the ninth stage, the Czech rider was doing well – he was in the lead in the overall standings. However, at the ninth stage, Loprais became the unwitting culprit in the death of a person. An Italian tried to get a beautiful shot and stood up in such a way that he fell into a dead zone of view. Loprais ended up hooking the Italian, didn’t notice anything and sped ahead in his Praga truck. Later, when it turned out that the fan had died, Loprais, being shocked by what had happened, chose to simply withdraw from the race. As a result, the Dutchman Janus van Kasteren on Iveco became the leader of the overall standings. He held onto the title without any problems, beating Martin Macik (MM Technology), who finished second, by more than an hour and 14 minutes.

Arnold Kabanov