Dakar 2012 Stage 4 - Despres maintains lead
Stage 4 saw the riders travel from San Juan to Chilecito, with the 40+ degree heat still a major factor on the day's Special Stage marked by long, dusty tracks. As the field moves ever closer to the Andes, Coma showed some impressive pace in his efforts to reel in the 10 minute lead of Despres, but in the end, could only shave 2 minutes off the Frenchman's lead. The 750km day's Stage featured a 326km Special Stage through part of the San Guillermo National Park, moving arounfd the bottom of the Sierra de Famatina and Sierra de la Punilla mountains.
Coma set the pace from the very beginning and had overtaken David Casteu (Yamaha), Helder Rodrigues (Yamaha), Paulo Gonçalves (Husqvarna) and Frans Verhoeven (Sherco) by km 137. Despres, leading the field at top speed, was losing 1'51" at that point, which increased to 3'49" at CP2, 115 km later. At that point, it looked like Coma was going to halve Despres' lead in the general classification, but in the end, he was unable to steal more than 2'02" from his rival The impossibility of competing "on a fair level" is becoming more and more obvious behind the KTM stars. After four days of racing, the candidates to the final podium already lie roughly half an hour back.
Verhoeven was the best of the rest, 8'26" back, despite suffering electrical issues which took him a few minutes to repair.
"I set off at a very fast pace this morning and was riding in the wake of Cyril, whom I saw in front of me. Everything went OK until 4 km before the refuelling point, when the motorcycle had an electrical problem and refused to start. I noticed part of the rear of the motorcycle had been ripped off, destroying the fuse," the Dutch rider said.
Behind Verhoeven, Rodrigues is the best placed rider in the general classification to take advantage of any mistake made by the duo of favourites. But he still lies 26'48" back! The Yamaha pilot, who already got a spot on the final podium last year, overtook David Casteu in the GC after the latter made a navigational mistake at the beginning of the stage. In one fell swoop, he also overtook Francisco "Chaleco" López (Aprilia), who joined Casteu in the group of riders who lost around 15 minutes between San Juan and Chilecito.
Coma won Stage 4 from Despres, Verhoeven, Rodrigues and Goncalves. In the overall classification, Despres leads by 8 minutes from Coma, followed by Rodrigues, Lopez, Casteu, Goncalves, Verhoeven, Pedrero Garcia (KTM), Villadoms (KTM) and Farres Guell (KTM) completing the top ten.
Amongst the Aussies, Rod Faggotter (Husaberg) is 25th overall, after suffering a 5 minute time penalty on the stage. Time penalties afflicted all the Aussie riders on Stage 4, with the exception of Craig Tarlington. The rest of the Aussies' overall positions are as follows: Dean Nuttall (KTM) - 47th; David Schwarz (Husaberg) - 54th; Jamie Chittick (Honda) - 60th; Craig Tarlington (KTM) - 125th; Mark Davidson (KTM) - 135th.
In the quad class, the Argentinean contingent has more than confirmed that they are back in charge. Four of them are currently placed in the Top 5, with only young Chilean Ignacio Casale able to mount a challenge. Tomás Maffei leads the Patronelli brothers, while Lucas Bonetto was able to clinch a fifth place on Stage 4. Maffei rounded off the day by taking the lead in the general classification, where he has a gap of 2'52" over Alejandro Patronelli and 6'10" over his brother Marcos. Behind the leading trio, all other competitors lie over one hour distant, making the quad class similar to the bikes in terms of clear leaders.
Full results and further details at www.dakar.com
Images: dakar.com
