The Monster Energy Honda HRC riders brave the cold and the wild on stage three

It was not what we expected today as the riders had a couple of problems, whether it was getting a bit lost, or they didn’t have the pace for the stage. Adrien was also a bit unwell today. Skyler finished sixth, which wasn’t too bad as day by day, he has more confidence on this type of terrain which is not what he’s used to back home. He lost a little bit of time around 70 km from the end as he took a wrong turn. Early on in the day, Ricky hit a stone and broke his exhaust so he had to stop a few times during the stage to fix it. He also got lost in the same place as Skyler, which lost him some precious minutes as he eventually finished fourth. Adrien also got lost in the same area and it happened to the other riders too, so there was obviously a lack of information on that note in the road book. We expected a better result today as I thought the riders would recover some time, however, we will focus on tomorrow and try to do our best on the final two days.

I’m happy to be back, it’s a bit warmer here than on the marathon night and so I’m looking forward to some good sleep. The special wasn’t too long at 260 km but the liaison afterwards was pretty brutal. The first half of the special I rode really well and then I saw that I wasn’t making up the time that I wanted to, so I just tried to push the last 60 km but got ahead of myself and made a couple of mistakes. I crashed once and then had an exhaust issue which I needed to pull over and fix. There are two more days left, I’m down a couple of minutes but it’s not over yet.

I’m happy to be back at Sun City, it was really cold up there at the lion camp that we were staying at. This is turning out to be a proper rally, the navigation has been really tricky and that’s one thing that can definitely make or break it. I haven’t done a perfect job so far, a few mistakes today navigation wise. At the end of the day I’m feeling really good on the bike, very happy with my setting, we’ve made a really good direction there, so I’m looking forward to making some improvements with the navigation and finishing these last two days on a strong note.

We had a special experience last night close to the animals at the marathon camp. We slept in the tent and it was really cold, but luckily I could managed to keep warm during the night in my sleeping bag. I really tried to push today, to ride well and at the refuelling I saw I was losing time, so I pushed through the last part, maybe too much and did two navigation mistakes which lost me some time. It’s the same for everybody, this is part of rally racing, but gave our best and still in the fight.