Ricky Brabec: “Another day closer to an American dream”

Dakar 2020 | Stage 9 | Wadi Al Dawasir > Haradh
January 14 ^th 2020 - 17:37 [GMT + 3]

Ricky Brabec achieved the fourth best time on the stage, losing only three minutes to Pablo Quintanilla. The Honda rider still has a solid lead in the general standings.

“Everything is definitely playing in my favour. I’m pretty stoked about that and excited - it’s another day closer to an American dream. But, there’s still three days left. It’s not very easy right now with the absence of Paulo. We’re just trying to stay focused and stay calm and maintain the advantage. There's three days left, like I said. Now we know where we’re at we’re going to rest and plan for the next day. The first hundred and sixty kilometres was really nice, really rocky, with twisty turns back and forth at a slower pace, a little bit tougher with the navigation because the trails were less visible. The second part, from refuelling in, about two hundred and thirty km, something around there, that part was just wide open across the valleys. It was fun. I was wanting to settle down a bit on it, but it’s the Dakar and there’s a taste of everything. There weren’t many sand dunes today and tomorrow is the marathon, so stage ten and eleven aren’t going to go by very quick. We won’t have the crew tomorrow night. Right now, we’re going to go to the bivouac, take some lunch and rest. We get the road-book tomorrow morning, so there’s no road-book tonight and then, well, we’re going to have fun. We put in a lot of work in 2019 during the summer in California, Nevada and Mexico just testing. It’s really nice seeing it all pay off, all the blood, sweat and tears, training, crashes at home and just all the hot days… it’s paying off so I’m excited about that and hopefully we’ll see in three days if it really will pay off”.