DAKAR 2024

Pablo Quintanilla wins a 'sprint' stage and Ross Branch once again leads the Dakar 2024

The Chilean Pablo Quintanilla has won the fifth stage of the Dakar 2024, the shortest special of the entire raid (not counting the prologue), ahead of the Frenchman Adrien Van Beveren in a new Honda double, giving Chile its third victory in four days and taking revenge for what happened the day before yesterday, when he lost the victory due to a penalty. In the general classification, Botswana's Ross Branch regains the lead just one day after giving it up to Chilean Nacho Cornejo.

There were two ways to approach a stage as peculiar as today's: go all out to try to gain some time knowing that the RallyGP drivers will go out to the 48-hour super marathon in reverse order; or put away the clothes taking into account that there were not going to be big differences and that the next two days could mark the future of the raid.

Pablo Quintanilla quickly showed that he was of the first school of thought, setting the best time in the first waypoint, already 16 seconds ahead of Ricky Brabec in a section of less than 20 minutes, where evidently the distances were ridiculous between the favorites.

They grew slightly in the second, where Brabec gave up positions after having caught Cornejo and going on to open the track together. And if in the race there were two Hondas that were ahead, in the times too, since after Quintanilla was Adrien Van Beveren, with Toby Price in third position.

Adrien Van Beveren has finished second in the fifth stage of the Dakar 2024(image above)

There was not much else to make a difference and so they ended, with Pablo Quintanilla covering the special of only 118 kilometers between Al-Hofuf and Shubaytah in 1 hour, 32 minutes and 53 seconds, ahead of Adrien Van Beveren in 37 seconds and Toby Price in just over a minute and a half.

On a favorable day for fast drivers, speed specialists such as Daniel Sanders, Mason Klein appeared at the top - on his first calm day in several days - and Ross Branch, who regained the lead with today's sixth position, with Ricky Brabec behind followed by Stefan Svitko and Luciano Benavides.

Although, perhaps, the big name of the day was that of the Austrian Tobias Ebster. Nephew of Heinz Kinigadner, he has already left details in the last two years in the Dubai Baja and in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and, despite competing in the Original category (which he leads), today he got into the final top 10 of the stage just four and a half minutes behind the winner.

In addition to being the best among the Rally2 drivers, Ebster finished the stage ahead of many RallyGP drivers such as Skyler Howes, Kevin Benavides, Nacho Cornejo and Joan Barreda, who had a day to forget: Hero's driver crashed twice and has finished last among the RallyGPs; so, to make matters worse, he condemns him to open the trail in the important day tomorrow.

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