Dakar | Montanari: “Castera has raised the bar this year”

In the traditional 7pm briefing with all the drivers, Dakar Director David Castera recalled that this will be the toughest edition since racing in Arabia with long and exhausting stages. In fact, there was no shortage of difficulties and after over 300 km of stony terrain on the first special, today the competitors faced 470 km of very fast tracks. Tomorrow, the bar will be raised again with the riders tackling the first marathon stage (without an assistance team) in Al Salamiya.

It was another positive day for the Fantic Racing team. The alarm went off at the bivouac at 5am with the first bike leaving around 6.30am.

“It was a very demanding and very long stage: 470 meters of special stage!! At the beginning we faced 30 km of dunes, the rest were very fast pistons. It went well and the bike worked well too. Compared to the last edition, this year Castera has raised the bar. Suffice it to say that tomorrow there will already be the first marathon stage, so we are preparing to spend the night in a tent in the Al Salamiya bivouac without the assistance team”, declared Tommaso Montanari, 35th.

“It was a very fast special with many kilometers of fast tracks on endless plateaux. There was a lot of dust, luckily few stones, but I liked the dunes at the beginning. Navigation was also easier than on the first day,” commented Jeremy Miroir, 38th.

“Growing up on bread and enduro, I feel better on hard, rocky terrain than on sand, but today I was pleasantly surprised by the dunes. I had a lot of fun even though I found a lot of dust especially in the section where we mixed with the cars and this slowed me down. However, it was a very long stage, six hours only for the special stage which requires maximum attention”, said Jane Daniels, 70th.