Seth Quintero: “We did the whole last 150 km without any brakes”

Dakar 2022 | Stage 6 | SHUBAYTAH > SHUBAYTAH
January 7 ^th 2022 - 15:04 [GMT + 3]

Today witnessed a sixth victory in the T3 class for the young 19-year-old American, who had to deal with a sizeable technical difficulty for almost half of the special! In spite of that, the Red Bull driver is hungry for more.

“That was, for sure, some of the scariest driving I have ever done. The stage was super fun and super-fast but unfortunately, right at the refuelling we got out and saw that there was brake fluid everywhere. I ended up losing the brakes a few kilometres after refuelling. So, we did the whole last 150 km without any brakes, absolutely no brakes. Going through the dunes with no brake pedal at all was pretty scary. Somehow, we managed to do it and it looks like right now that we may have got the win, which is absolutely nuts with no brakes – I’m so excited about that, super stoked about that. That’s number six and we’re going to keep on chugging along, we’re going to keep on picking them off and we’ve got a few more to go. I heard that the record was ten in a seventeen-stage long Dakar, so it’s going to be tough to beat ten in a twelve-stage long Dakar, but we’ll try to manage. I think Dennis and I really put a lot of time in last year spending months and months outside our home countries to test and prepare for this race and I’m really happy that it is showing because there were a lot of months sacrificed for this and it’s paying off. Unfortunately, we’re out of the overall, but we’re going to keep on grabbing these stage wins hopefully and have some fun. That’s all I’m here for now, to have some fun and I’m definitely having fun doing it. I think we’ve found a good pace to bring to the finish every day. Besides losing the brakes, I think we ended up breaking the rear diff today about fifty kilometres ago, so we ended up on two-wheel drive. But it is what it is… We’re going to go and get that fixed, head into the rest day, have a nice rest and try and get more stages after that”.