Seth Quintero: “I’m just going to keep a smile on my face”

Dakar 2023 | Stage 9 | HAIL > ALULA
January 10 ^th 2023 - 17:34 [GMT + 3]

 Although he was touted as the major favourite for the 2023 edition, Seth Quintero saw his chances of winning the title annihilated even before the rest day. In spite of it all, the American is endeavouring to keep smiling and trying to take advantage of the remaining kilometres to be covered before the finish in Dammam. Quintero, who finished tenth on the day’s, nonetheless features on the podium of the provisional general rankings…  
 

“The Dakar has been quite the adventure. That’s what we’re all here for, to get some adventure. Obviously, we had our one bad stage which made us lose about an hour and a half that day. Other than that, we’ve just had so much fun and I’m so blessed to be in this position that we’re in. We’re definitely in a way different mode than we have been in the past, when we’ve been fighting really hard to get stage wins, but this year we’re in a place where stage wins don’t really matter at this point. We’re just going to kind of manage and stay in our spot. We’re about an hour out from first place so we’re not really in contention to fight for the win right now, unless the guys in front of us make a mistake. We’re kind of just in a chilled mode, but like I said, we’re super blessed to be in this position and I’m just going to keep a smile on my face. We’re finally done with the long days. I think we’ve had over for or five hundred kilometres each in the past few days which has been absolutely crazy, but I’ve had a lot of fun, like I said. The day’s are going to get a lot shorter, but they will get slower as we go into the Empty Quarter with the big dunes, so we’ll see what happens. I love the dunes, but I don’t know how much I love the dunes to that extent, so we’ll have some fun and see where we end up”.