Giniel de Villiers : “To push like that so early, maybe it’s not a great strategy for me”

Dakar 2022 | Stage 2 | AL HENAKIYAH > AL DUWADIMI
January 3 rd 2022 - 17:00 [GMT + 3]

With an 8th place finish today, a little more than 10’ behind Loeb and at the foot of the provisional podium in the overall classification, Giniel de Villiers already trails the duo of Al-Attiyah and Loeb by 40 minutes.

Giniel de Villiers _Stage 2_ENG
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“Unfortunately, we had a big moment at the beginning, with the car jumping and landing on the wheel and we lost our left rear wheel, so we had to stop and change it. Other than that, it wasn’t too bad. We had to change the wheel because there was a big moment on a jump where it landed askew and took the tyre of the bib, so we had to stop and change, but other than that, there weren’t too many issues. Nasser achieved an incredible time, he’s just incredibly good on these fast stages like this. We’re happy with our performance today. It was just a puncture which cost us maybe three minutes, but other than that we’re very happy. There’s a big fight between Nasser and Seb and they are two great drivers. They’re really, really good and are the two that are closest together. A lot of people lost a lot of time yesterday with the way point, so it’s very open at the moment, but, for sure, Nasser and Seb are very close and they are definitely going to have a big fight. They’re going at really high speeds and I’m more than twenty minutes back, even thirty minutes behind Nasser, so to push like that so early, maybe it’s not a great strategy for me, but we’ll see. It’s a long way to go. There are still ten more days and with the stages like today there are some really difficult parts so anything can happen”.

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