Quintanilla in transition

December 30 ^th 2022 - 22:24 [GMT + 3]

Après deux victoires consécutives, le clan Honda aurait certainement souhaité se représenter à Jeddah sans rien changer à ses plans. Mais Kevin Benavides, le tenant du titre, a cédé aux sirènes de KTM qui arbore la plaque numéro un. Réponse du berger à la bergère, le HRC a recruté Pablo Quintanilla chez Husqvarna. Le Chilien n’a pas mis longtemps à apprivoiser la 450 CRF Rally et a même renoué avec la victoire qui lui échappait depuis deux ans en remportant le Rallye du Maroc en octobre dernier. La nouvelle recrue des "rouges" est prête à remporter son premier Dakar :

“Honestly, I feel really good, super happy with the team and also with the bike. The last two races for me were really good – I won the last race in Morocco – and honestly this year I feel really well trained. My confidence is really good as well. I’ve done many kilometres on the bike, so now I can say I have a really good feeling with the bike. I feel prepared and I will race to try to win the rally – we will see. It’s a long race but I feel strong and I have the confidence that I can ride a good race. The goal is to win for the team and we will race for that goal. Of course, everybody on the team wants to win but in the end we’ll each try to ride our race. We’ll try to do something with the strategy to benefit all the riders. In the end, we’ll try to save our backs and watch out for each other and do that throughout the race. The atmosphere is really good. You can feel it from the outside and from the inside it’s really amazing. Of course, all the riders have experience, but we have different kinds of rider in this team. Joan has a lot of experience and is really fast, Nacho is very good at navigation, Ricky already has the experience of what it takes to win the Dakar, so I think it’s a good mix. We’ve got something from all the riders and in the end this mix is strong, as a team we feel strong and we think and we feel that we have all the tools to win the race. For me, I also have the experience. It’s my tenth Dakar already, so I’ve got many kilometres in the body, I’ve got good speed and good navigation. These last months, I’ve been training a lot in the north of Chile with Nacho and I think my navigation is improving, much better than other years, so that makes me feel more confident and stronger on the bike”.