2020 DAKAR RALLY WINNER RICKY BRABEC
P54
Interview
Day three is when you moved into the lead,
and you really hit the throttle and put 18 minutes
on the field. What was it like from that point?
After day three, obviously I won, so day four I
had to open up the whole track, and it was one of
the longest days. I think 570 race kilometers. So,
I was really nervous. I was like, "I just made up all
this time and tomorrow I'm sure I'm going to lose
it." I opened the whole day by myself. I got caught
by my teammate [Ignacio Cornejo], I got caught by
one person who started right behind me. On that
day, I only lost eight minutes to the winner. I was
still really good. I still had a 10-minute lead after
day four. That day [stage three], opening the track
and only losing eight minutes, I felt really confident
for the rest of the rally. I didn't have any big mis-
takes. The bike only fell over two times and it was in
the sand dunes both times, so literally my bike had
no scratches on it. It was pretty amazing.
There's obviously a balance between win-
ning stages and having to open the track the
next day. Explain what that means.
In rally, it's not necessarily good to win a stage.
Sometimes we lose stages by a big margin on
purpose. There's definitely a theory. If tomorrow is
hard, you for sure don't want to win today. If tomor-
row is easy and fast, then you want to win today.
When people see it on tv, obviously it doesn't
