IN
THE
WIND
P44
BARREDA WINS MERZOUGA RALLY
J
oan Barreda was the overall
winner at the Merzouga Rally
in Morocco, April 16-20. After
six stages, Barreda beat out his
Monster Energy Honda team-
mate Kevin Benavides by six
minutes and 10 seconds.
Third place went to Pablo
Quintanilla of the Husqvarna
Factory Rally Team; the Chilean
finish a little over five minutes
behind Benavides.
Between the two, Barreda and
Benavides won five of the six
special tests.
American Ricky Brabec (Mon-
ster Energy Honda Team) was
fifth overall, 21 minutes behind
the winner.
Husqvarna's Andrew Short
finished 10th overall.
"I am very happy to be back
winning races again, especially
because we can now forget
about a year of injuries," Barreda
said. "There is still work to do to
get back to 100 percent, physi-
cally, and be able to ride my way,
without pain. That's the way I like
to do it—return to the competition
like that, have a great race and
finish with a win. This will serve
as great motivation to keep push-
ing and reach the highest level
by the end of the year."
Brabec was pleased with his
ride. "It's the final stage of an
eventful rally which had some
highs and lows," Brabec said.
"The rally started off well with a
great first stage, and then there
were some good ones up until
the fourth stage. That was where
many people all had the same
problems with the roadbook. I
managed, like some of the oth-
ers, to make it through to the end
with a few mistakes, but this is
rallying where everyone makes
a few errors. I lost time that day,
but in the final stage I was able to
make it up and ended up finishing
just 40 seconds off the podium.
For me, that's awesome and a
confidence booster. I'm not totally
happy with the overall result, but
I'm pleased with the individual
stages. Thanks to all." CN
OVERALL
1. Joan Barreda (Hon)
2. Kevin Benavides (Hon)
3. Pablo Quintanilla (Hus)
4. Franco Caimi (Yam)
5. Ricky Brabec (Hon)
6. Toby Price (KTM)
7. Joan Pedrero (She)
8. Jose Ignacio Cornejo (Hon)
9. Stefan Svitko (KTM)
10. Andrew Short (Hus)
Joan Barreda led
a Honda 1-2 sweep
of the Merzouga
Rally in Morocco.
American Ricky
Brabec was fifth.
