Stage 5 was a 662KM route from Riyadh to Al Qaisumah, 456 KM of which was competitive stage.
After getting his 26th stage win in Dakar, Joan Barreda opened the special for the day. He trailed off the track around 70 km into the day and had to take a detour, which caused him 17 minutes. His day was about pretty much spent on damage repair but the Spaniard could only managed to finish with P17.
His fellow teammate Kevin Benavides on the other hand had a pretty outstanding day. He was in a tight competition with his other teammate Jose Ignacio Cornejo. The lead went back and forth between the two but in the end it was Benavides who claimed the day. He did it despite a crash around 330 km as a result of which he injured his nose. Benavides also moved ahead of De Soltrait in the general classification by 2’31”.
Cornejo finished the day with P2 just 1m shy from the stage winner and moved to P3 in general. It was Toby Price who completed the top three for the day. The Aussie came in 1’20’ behind Benavides and now holds P4 in general.
Retirements of the day;
C.S. Santosh, Interno Tiziano and Eric Martinez
Stage 5 Highlights;
Stage Comments
Kevin Benavides “Today was a very difficult stage with a lot of pain, but hey, the pain is temporary. At first, I was lost and then I started to make up time. In a very large dune, I jumped to the other side and fell into a hole and on top of another dune, then I hit hard and stopped at 0. At that impact I hit the helmet against the GPS, broke the GPS and the helmet. Luckily the nose is not broken, just hurt and my ankles were also bent on impact. But hey, I got up and kept pushing, I received assistance in the next refueling and kept pushing until the end (with a lot of pain), but fine. I got a good stage; the important thing is to always keep going. Happy to have won the stage and to be leading the general classification, I am calm and focused on continuing to do my day-to-day work. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s a nice flavor to be leading this race.”
Toby Price “Quite difficult today, the first 300km was tough navigation, I thought Days 1-3 was tough but today was a whole new ball game! I made a few mistakes and the front two guys got away from me a bit, but managed to finished 3rd and move up to 4th overall.”
Total distance covered after Stage 5 : 3,412 KM
Stage 5 Classification
General Classification After Stage 5
Full Results!
