Drama unfolds on stage one of the South African Safari Rally

On the first part of today, riders were faced with a very technical, slippery stage with navigation also testing them. Skyler made two quite big mistakes with the navigation and lost some time. It was not the best stage for him, but it’s only the first day and he can get some time back tomorrow. Tosha had a crash just before the refuelling zone and he has come away from that with an injury to his right hand and some damage to his bike. He managed to get to the finish line, but we will evaluate the situation to see if he can recover for tomorrow and ride. Hopefully he can continue. Ricky was on the pace and didn’t make too many mistakes to finish third, so that is a good result for him. He won’t have to open tomorrow, so I do think starting in third is a good place for him to be. Adrien rode well, he had some problems with the tablet this morning, but after changing it he came away with a strong result in second. Tomorrow is the first part of the marathon stage, so we’ll see what happens.

That was actually pretty fun, it’s really nice here and I’ve liked it so far. The first 15 to 20km I was like, oh my gosh this is going to take all day, the big grass fields we were ripping through were definitely not something I’m used to. I don’t live anywhere near grass, so it was a bit slippery this morning but after this it opened up, it was fairly quick and navigation was quite fun. I’m just happy to get to the finish of day one and hopefully can keep pushing, day by day. I set out in seventh position, even though I wanted fifth, but it wasn’t too dusty today so catching the guys in front of me wasn’t too bad and we had a good breeze out there. There was a lot of mud, quite wet ground, so that was really good. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going.

Not my proudest day. I actually felt really happy with the setting on the bike, I’m really glad with the direction we’ve gone in and it’s been very positive. However, I’m really unhappy with my navigation, I made one really big mistake which lost me over ten minutes, then two or three more mistakes, losing two to three minutes per mistake, so I lost a lot of time today and it was my own fault. I’ve got to tighten that up, other than that, I rode really good, I’m happy with my riding and I know that I have the pace and if I can keep the navigation tight, I think the result could be really good.

I felt quite good on the bike although I had some problems with the tablet at the beginning as it kept going on and off and so I tried to follow the tracks ahead in some places. I managed to stay calm and ended up riding well. We went through some deep water, I think the bike took some water but luckily I could start again and continue. At the refuelling point the organisation changed the tablet so that was good to get this issue sorted.