Rally-Raid World Championship: Desafio ruta 40 Stage one highlights and results

Video highlights and results from stage one of the 2024 Desafio Ruta 40 round of the World Rally-Raid Championship in Argentina where Tosha Schareina is the early leader, one second ahead Ricky Brabec taking the day win and home hero Luciano Benavides goes out with broken leg.

Brabec by a whisker on stage 1

The time it takes to read this sentence is longer than the gap between Ricky Brabec and Tosha Schareina at the finish of the stage. Just one second split the two at the end of the 381 km special, with the Californian gaining the upper hand on the day and breathing down the prologue winner.

“Today was mostly tracks and dirt roads and even we had 10km of a sand wash with a little bit of navigation, but otherwise it was all good.” Said the Dakar champion. “There were a lot of fast pistes so we did 380km that were fairly quick so all in all it was a fast day. After the refuelling I decided to make a push as I had lost a bit of time in the first part of the stage, so in the second half I put my head down and really made sure I could enter and exit the corners without sliding too much. The roads out here are slick but we did a good job, so I’m looking forward to the next four days.”

Schareina was caught off guard in the mad dash to the line by his teammate, who surged from sixth place at km 241 to erase a 42-second deficit and vault into the lead. It is by the same amount however that Schareina leads overall.

stage-1-schareina

Adrien Van Beveren made it a Honda clean sweep on the podium, 44 seconds back in the special and 1′29″ down in the overall.

The Hero riders Sebastian Bühler and Ross Branch rounded out the top 5 at 2′06″ and 2′29″. In fact, the German had led the special until km 148 before running out of steam.

It was not a good day for world champion and home hero Lucian Benavides who crashed on the stage and has a suspected broken femur.

The Rally 2 victor also produced a comeback on Argentina’s slippery tracks. Bradley Cox, 1′52″ down on Romain Dumontier at km 98, ended up taking the win by 1′25″. The Peruvian hopeful Ramiro Barco hauled his Hero to third, 29′04″ adrift. Mechanical gremlins cost the podium contender Konrad Dąbrowski (Duust Rally) a great deal of time. Cox seized the overall lead by 1′23″. The Frenchman must absolutely defend his championship lead, as the three-point gap to the South African makes their DR40 duel crucial in the scrap for the title.

Rally 3 welcomed a new winner. The day after Fernando Hernández (MED Racing) bagged his maiden W2RC win, it was his rival John Medina (Xraids Experience) who opened his account. The Argentinian had initially prevailed by 12 seconds, but he copped a 6-minute penalty for breaching neutralisation rules, versus 2 minutes for Medina. In the end, the Chilean ended up 3′48″ ahead and now leads the standings by 2′55″ over Hernández.