Schareina and Brabec deliver dominant one-two for Monster Energy Honda HRC on stage two

Stage two is complete after around 300 km of very demanding terrain. The day started with camel grass sections, then moved into broken, rocky and fast tracks near the Algerian border, followed by a wide riverbed and the dunes of Merzouga. It was a great day for us: Tosha won the stage and closed the gap to Daniel Sanders, now just 43 seconds behind. Tomorrow he will open the stage, which is never easy, but we’re confident he can handle it. Ricky also delivered a strong performance, finishing second, just over two minutes behind Tosha and he’ll be right behind him tomorrow to open the stage. Adrien finished fourth, riding smart and steady even though he’s still recovering from his crash in Portugal, but it’s good to see him improving each day. Unfortunately, Skyler suffered a small crash and had to withdraw even though he was having a solid stage. That’s rallying, sometimes tough luck hits. Tomorrow we’ll focus on keeping to our plan and maintaining this strong pace.

Stage two was a lot better. We diagnosed a few things after stage one based on what I was feeling and man, it made a big difference. I enjoyed it a little bit more today, it’s was more high speed and kind of rolling navigation, so for me it was fun and I really enjoyed the day. We did a good job and me and Tosha are in a big fight right now, but it’s fun. There’s three days left and hopefully it’s more or less similar to today.

Well, part of rally is sometimes you have issues and today we had an issue that took me out of the race. I was feeling really good on the stage and riding really really strong and looking forward to making our way into the dunes as well. But at 104 km is where I had an issue that took me out of the race, so I’m really bummed out and sad to not finish out the season on a strong note and not to finish the Morocco rally. This is my favourite rally of the year so bummed out, but the good news is that I’m here and healthy and I can continue to train and we can get back to work and go into the Dakar strong.

The most difficult thing for me is the early morning when I wake up. Somehow it’s really tough and the beginning of the stage was again like yesterday, I was stiff and needed time to warm up and get into a rhythm. Today, I really tried to unlock my mind and enjoy my riding and to be honest, I felt better. I think the first 50 km were a bit slow and then I got into a rhythm and my body warmed up. During the last part I got kind of stiff again, but overall I’m getting better and I’m really happy about the job I’m doing. I think we’re doing good considering and I’m really glad I can ride and get back into a rhythm step by step.

Definitely so much better than yesterday. We finally took the victory, first and second for the team, so that’s so good. We are in a battle with Daniel and Ricky and with Ricky for second place in the championship. It was not easy today, it was so rough, so fast, there were some parts with dunes and the last bit had no visibility. I tried to follow the tracks of Daniel but there was no visibility and it was so hard to follow. I think it’s going good, we did some upgrades on the bike as well and tomorrow, as always, we have that difficult mission to open the stage.