Complicated navigation in the Morocco Rally second stage

It was a long stage at 285 kilometres, with many dry rivers, a lot of rocks, a lot of hazards and some tough navigation. I was doing pretty well until the refuelling. Towards the end I got confused over a note at kilometre 230, but I was able to get back on track and make it back to the bivouac okay. Tomorrow we have the marathon stage and I start out sixth, so that should be a good day. We must try not to make more navigational errors to be able to make up for lost time.

Stage two is complete. The riders are all here. We are all safe and ready to compete tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the marathon stage and the longest two days in the rally. With the marathon stage in the middle it’s not so easy. Today was fast and rocky – more my style of riding. I’m comfortable doing it. I was riding really well. Unfortunately, some 35km from the end I came across Paulo and Sam and I thought something tricky was happening. In the end we lost a bit of time there finding our own route to the waypoint. That’s the way it is. You lose a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, that’s rally – it’s not easy to find your way across Africa, not least of all with a paper map. I’m happy to finish the day and we’ll push tomorrow. Hopefully by the end we’ll have a couple of Hondas up around the podium area.

We have finished the second day of the race with some good feelings on the bike. I’m more and more comfortable on hard track with stones. Unfortunately, I made a navigation error where many other riders also lost time. However I'm left with some good feelings on the bike and we hope it will get better over the forthcoming days.