Double delight for Schareina in Spain as he takes stage victory and the overall lead of Rally-Raid Portugal

It was a really good result for us today with Tosha’s stage win and this was really good for the overall standings as he now leads with a 1’42” gap. Ricky did a strong stage today but unluckily crashed near the end of the stage and he lost around a minute of time and he had some damage on his bike and to himself. But he got to the end of the stage and he’s now ready for tomorrow. Skyler also did a good job finishing in fifth. Tomorrow, Tosha will be out first on the stage and it won’t be easy for him, but he is prepared for that and will try to hold on to the advantage he has heading into the last day. Tomorrow, there will be 274 km on the special stage and we believe that it will be possible to keep Tosha at the top of the standings.

It was a little bit shorter than yesterday but I hit the ground today, it’s very hard here and with bald tyres it’s really slippery out there. Apart from that I rode really well all day, just a little mistake which resulted in me low-siding in a corner near the finish and my pinky was completely sideways so I had to put it back in its place, but it is what it is and I can keep racing. Overall the day was good, maybe I was trying to go a little bit too fast as after refuelling I knew my tyres were smoked, but it was the last push to make up a little bit of time. I saw the times and I wasn’t far off so I was trying to find traction and ride in a high gear and be mellow with the throttle and after 60 kilometres I felt like I was losing time, then I tried to push a little bit too much. I came over one rise with a sweeping right-hander and was going in a little bit too hot, couldn’t slow down, saw there was a fence on the outside, like a ditch with a berm and I realised I was going too fast to end up straight in the fence. I slid into the bank, once I did that it kind of sucked me in and then I low-sided it against the ditch and that’s where I lost a little bit of time. Today we’re fourth, which isn’t bad and fourth overall, only ten seconds behind the final podium spot, so we’ll keep pushing.

Today was a little more my style, bit more open, less trees and I was a lot more comfortable out there, getting back into the zone here and feeling a little more like myself. I had fun today, it was a little bit more like stuff I’m used to riding back at home, “Best In The Desert” style I do in the USA. It felt pretty good but I caught up to the guys in front of me and they were kicking up a bit of dust and it was hanging there as there wasn’t a lot of wind, so I made a couple of mistakes, missed some corners, had to do some U-turns, but all in all a really good day, no crashes or major issues, so I’m really happy with that.

It’s going to be two really hard days out front and tomorrow we will have the mission of opening the stage. It will not be easy, for sure it’s not like the desert here, but we will see. We are so close and we will push from the beginning to the end. It was good to see the crowd cheering us on and it was the motivation that I needed.