Austin Jones: “We have just got to stay positive”

Dakar 2022 | Stage 11 | ALULA > YANBU
January 13 ^th 2022 - 17:19 [GMT + 3]

This morning’s general rankings leader with an advantage of 12 minutes, Austin Jones today had problems with his transmission and had to tackle the dunes in two-wheel drive. At the finishing line, his closest pursuer Gerard Farrés took the commands of the category by 1’41’’.

“This day was definitely the hardest so far. We lost the front diff with about a hundred kilometres to go, so we were on two-wheel drive and we had to get out and fix that and then we had to get through all those big dunes. Basically, all the rest of the stuff was two-wheel drive. It wasn’t too easy, but we made it, obviously, and we only gave up however much time we’ve lost. We’re not in a bad spot for the last day tomorrow, so we’ll see what we can do. Chasing definitely makes it a little bit harder. The Dakar is extremely cruel. Both of those sayings are correct. But we’ll chase him tomorrow and we’ll see what happens. We have just got to stay positive. It’s definitely stressful. It’s not a good feeling, but, again, we just have to wait and see what happens. Anything can happen, so we’ll see”.