Mitchell Guthrie: “We’re still in a good position”

Dakar 2024 | Stage 9 | HAIL > ALULA
January 16 ^th 2024 - 17:35 [GMT + 3]

Even though he lost a little more than 5 minutes to Cristina Gutiérrez during the ninth stage which he finished in seventh place, Mitchell Guthrie still holds a solid lead in the Challenger category, with 28’35” now between the American and the Spaniard.

“Everyone was pushing really hard, so that definitely made it hard on us, because we’re leading. I wanted to take care of the car, but I didn’t want to lose too much time. It was going well until I made a mistake. I hit a rock pretty hard and then after that I didn’t know if the car was ok, so I just wanted to just kind of take it easy to the finish, but then we probably lost some time coming in to the finish. We’ll see where we are. We had a thirty-something minute lead coming into today, so I know we’re still in a good position and we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. With three days to go, anything can happen, like today. I think we lost a bit of time. Of course, we want to keep the cushion as best we can but we’ll see where we end up”.