The youngest of the Benavides brothers is the first rider of the Dakar 2023 to repeat the victory: “These are unforgettable days”

He is the first rider of this Dakar 2023 to repeat the victory in the motorcycle category. Luciano Benavídes, the youngest of the Salta brothers, 27 years old, four days ago was thrilled to achieve his first success. And now he has won again, closing the ninth stage, the first of the second half of Dakar 2023.

A Husqvarna rider, he had an impeccable performance on a day characterized by wind and sandstorms. Despite this, she accelerated to win the stage: “What I’m experiencing is incredible. Everything went for me to win again. These are unforgettable days”, he stated in Clarin.

Big brother, Kevin, has lost ground to the leader, American Skyler Howes (Husqvarna), who was just 13 seconds off on Monday and is now 5m9 off.

“I had a problem at the beginning of the stage and this affected me. Then I didn’t have a bad rhythm, but a good one. That’s all. I didn’t get anxious when I was so close to the lead in the general classification, nor now that I’ve moved away. This race comes and goes and you have to take advantage of the moments,” highlighted the winner of the Dakar 2021.

The other Argentinian who was very happy with a win was Pampas’ David Zille, who won in the Side by Side car category, with UTVs. “I have absolute happiness. I walked very fast, with flawless navigation. Everything went better than expected, ”commented the Argentine, who was the subject of a viral video a week ago, when he was involved in a head-on collision with another competitor in the middle of the desert.

Among these light vehicles, the works of Jeremías González Ferioli (3rd), Juan Manuel “Pato” Silva, of the Puma Energy Rally Team, and Nicolás Cavigliasso stand out.

On the sidelines, on the bike, a good performance by Franco Caimi, who obtained 10th place in his best performance, while very soon the atmosphere of the Dakar was shaken by the terrible accident of the Spanish Joan Barreda, transferred by helicopter to the hospital of Riyadh where he confirmed the fracture of the L2 vertebra.

In the car, another scene struck: that of Carlos Sainz, who had a tremendous head-on blow, when he jumped a dune and fell on his log at the start of another. The Audi driver, who was about to be rescued by a helicopter, preferred to continue despite the damage to the hybrid vehicle to use his second “jocker” or hitch.

Although the stage was won by Sebastien Loeb (Bahrain), the general classification is dominated by the Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota). The best Argentinian is Juan Cruz Yacopini (Toyota) from Mendoza, while his co-province Sebastián Halpern (Mini) finished 9th in the stage.

Among the quads, the Argentines, with Francisco Moreno, Pablo Copetti and Manu Andujar, are more than an hour behind the Frenchman Alexander Giraud.

On Wednesday the activity will start at 3:30 in the morning, to start the long journey of 623 kilometers towards Shaybah, as a prologue to enter the most challenging area of ​​Saudi Arabia: the “Empty Quarter”, the most deserted area that will cross the Dakar , until the end of next Sunday in Dammam, on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

The sequence of photos from the Sainz incident

HARADH, Saudi Arabia