Toby Price: “I'm definitely here to win, like everyone else”

Dakar 2019 | Stage 2 | Pisco > San Juan de Marcona
January 8 ^th 2019 - 14:24 [GMT -5]

With the firm intention of improving his performance from one day to another, Toby Price finished the second day of the rally having avoided the pitfalls of a special that the heat made more complicated. After a finish neck-and-neck with his Austrian team-mate Matthias Walkner, the Australian completed the stage in fourth place. He now lies in fifth in the general standings, four and a half minutes behind the leader.

“I ended up breaking a scaphoid in my wrist, on the right side, but we’ve got it fixed I think. It should be half decent, so we’ll just see how the race goes. We’re here and that’s the main thing, so I’m just happy to kick the race off. There’s been a little bit of pain over the last three and a half or four weeks, for sure, the scaphoid isn’t the best bone to break. It takes a long time for the recovery process, but all in all, I’m still comfortable, still happy and we’ll just see how the race kicks off for us. I’ll just relax and see how I go, see if I can get down and if I can do this then it’s the best part. If I’m in the right position I can fight and if the wrist can put up with the pressure and everything, then, yeah, I’ll definitely go full gas. We’ll see, but I'm definitely here to win, like everyone else is here to win - we'll see how it goes. All the teams have got top riders who can win this race no problem. The fight between Honda, Yamaha and ourselves, Husqvarna and Sherco is always really strong and it's what we need for the sport. Hopefully, the guys are going to stay in the sport for many years to come, but hopefully at the end of the day it's an orange bike that's still sitting on the top. We'll try and make the best fight we can”.