2022 Dakar Rally Results: Barreda wins stage 2, Sunderland takes rally lead

Results from the 2022 Dakar Rally where Monster Energy Honda’s Joan Barreda has won stage two in Saudi Arabia, his 28th day victory ahead of Sam Sunderland who takes over the rally lead on the GASGAS.

Dakar '22 stage 2 in a nutshell:

Today’s stage was approximately a straight line (on the map at least!) from Ha’il to Al Qaisumah, with 453km on the road and a timed special of 338km.
Navigation was again a key factor in the results with the stage one rally leader Daniel Sanders having the tables turned today and losing time, while riders behind capitalised on their later start positions.
Sherco’s Rui Goncalves made an early break to lead on corrected time, the Portuguese rider needed to after a disastrous day one where he finished in 87th place. But he was later penalised 15 minutes for missing waypoints in his haste.
Joan Barreda, one of the many who lost time finding a waypoint yesterday, says it was important to make amends and “to recover the good feeling” today and the HRC rider was quickly fighting for the stage lead. Riding fast in the dunes and following tracks in front allowed the Spaniard to take his 28th stage win. Yup, 28 in total.
Adrien Van Beveren and Sam Sunderland took on the job of opening the piste for much of the day. The pair are among a solid crew holding station inside the top 10 including Matthias Walkner, Skyler Howes, Lorenzo Santolino, Pablo Quintanilla, Stefan Svitko and South African Aaron Mare who’s having a great Dakar on the Hero Motorsports machine so far.
Frenchman Van Beveren says slowing down to be sure of hitting the checks “isn’t easy when you’re racing” but it seems a smart move given the Yo-Yo effect around him in the classification.
Sunderland was equally focused on the navigation, “even though I could see the tracks of the other guys, I was always double-checking, double-checking and double-checking” explained the British rider who finished P2, 5.33 behind the winner and just ahead of Kevin Benavides in third.
Sunderland now leads overall by just under three minutes from Van Beveren with Matthias Walkner the leading KTM rider in third, 4.08 behind.
Stage one winner Daniel Sanders said he’d need to put navigation as priority today but things didn’t quite go to plan and he lost a heap of time, partly by going down the wrong canyon after refuelling. He finished 28th, 35 minutes down on the stage winner including a 10 minute penalty which puts him P7 scratch.
MotoGP convert, Danilo Petrucci had a tough stage two after an amazing P13 result yesterday. His factory KTM cut out and would not restart leaving the Italian with no choice but to call in the helicopter…

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