Sherco-TVS Leads The Dakar After Stage One

THE RALLY KICKED OFF FROM PARAGUAY'S CAPITAL, ASUNCION WITH THE FIRST COMPETITIVE STAGE BEING A RELATIVELY SMALL 39 KILOMETRE SPECIAL STAGE!

Debuting in 1978, Dakar, formerly known as the ‘Paris-Dakar’ rally is the world's toughest rally raid event that takes competitors across various countries. This year the rally started from Paraguay, which becomes the 29th nation to host the famous endurance rally.
The rally kicked off from Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion with the first stage being a relatively small 39 kilometre stage compared to the overall stage which was 454km long
As tradition, the order of competitors is set based on the result board from last year. So las year’s Dakar winner, Toby Price was the first rider to start the stage with the rest of the competitors following every two minutes.

Xavier Del Soultrait finished the stage in first place but intentionally took a penalty by speeding through the links so that he would not have to begin the next stage in first place. The strategic move gained him a one minute penalty that saw him pushed to tenth place in the overall standing and had TVS Sherco rider Juan Pedrero, who was behind by two minutes, being promoted to first place. Trailing him by 12 seconds was Ricky Brabec followed Paulo Goncalves.

Team Hero Speedbrain also fared well well on their first outing with Joaquim Rodrigues finishing stage one in 16th place. Fellow rider CS Santosh finished the stage in 47th place. After the stage , he said, “Being the first stage of the Dakar, there were some nerves flying and I was pretty nervous at start. In the first couple of kilometres it took some time to understand the kind of stage it’s going to be for the next 40 kilometres. There was a lot of water and lots of puddles and a few river crossings. I didn’t really push because it’s the first day at the Dakar and there is a long way to go.”

Aravind KP who debuts in Dakar this year with the TVS Sherco team, finished the stage a strong 61th position in a group of 142 riders. There is one thing that Dakar’s past has taught us is you can never predict who will win till the very end of the rally and it is here where endurance counts more than pace.