Stéphane Peterhansel: “There are no easy victories on the Dakar”

Dakar 2021 | Stage 12 | Yanbu > Jeddah
January 15 th 2021 - 12:47 [GMT + 3]

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On completion of a race he drove masterfully, Stéphane Peterhansel, taking part for the first year with Edouard Boulanger as his co-pilot, added a fourteenth victory to his roll of honour, tasting success thirty years after his first victory on a bike in 1991.

“It’s still the same emotion for the 14th victory. Like I said, to win the Dakar is always really complicated. There are no easy victories on the Dakar. This one from the outside maybe looked easy, but it was not easy every day to manage the small gap over Nasser. There was a lot of pressure on the body. We felt every day that we had everything to lose, so it was complicated to manage, but in the end we did a really good job together with Edouard for his first race in a top car. It was a really incredible job, with good navigation but also he was really calm. For sure, it is one or two more records for me: 14 victories, on three continents and also on the anniversary of my first victory 30 years ago today. It’s a long career in motorsport. Experience and being able to stay calm helped to win, I think, but I don’t know… The difference was probably that Nasser made the first mistake on the prologue. He won the prologue and I think it was his first mistake. He probably lost the Dakar because he wanted to win the prologue. The duo with Edouard is really fantastic, I have to say that. He has all the qualities to be the best co-pilot in rally-raids and he learned really quickly. He made no mistakes and he understood everything really quickly as well. We share the same passion because he was a biker in the past. He did the Dakar once on a motorcycle, but he also took part in ten or fifteen Enduro du Touquet races, so he’s really a biker and we have the same spirit a little bit. It’s nice to drive with him. The first victory on the motorcycle is my favourite, because it was the one that I dreamed a lot of and now it’s really a bonus. Winning is always a big emotion, but the first victory was the best one”.

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