Photo: Flavien Duhamel / Red Bull Content Pool
The 2015 Dakar Rally kicked off yesterday, with Sam Sunderland charging hard out of the gate to take the first stage win.
If you remember much about last year’s Dakar, you’ll likely remember Sunderland seemed like he would mount a challenge for the overall win, with impressive performance early in the rally. Unfortunately for him, his Honda blew up. Now he’s with a new team (KTM), and yesterday he beat everyone for the first stage win.
Second place in the bike class went to Paulo Goncalves (Honda) and last year’s champ, Marc Coma, was third (KTM). There was very little time between the top three riders; Sunderland was five seconds ahead of Goncalves, and one minute, 12 seconds ahead of Coma. By the looks of it, Sunderland won’t have an easy time of it if he wants to win.
What of Cyril Despres, previous bike champ who’s moved to the Peugeot car team? Despres’ car ended up 33rd overall yesterday, with no problems to report. Another ex-motorcycle racer, former Honda ace Johnny Campbell (who dominated at Baja 1000 as rider and team manager for years, and also finished in top 10 at Dakar before) did much better. Campbell’s riding as Robbie Gordon’s navigator, and finished second overall yesterday.
You can see the top 10 rankings for motorcycles below, underneath the video. At this point, there isn’t much time separating the riders, and a crummy first day has left a few (like David Casteau) further down the standings than expected,. Expect that to even out considerably over the next few days.
Dakar2015 : Bike rankings after Stage 1
1. Sunderland (KTM) – 01:18:57
2. Goncalves (Honda) – 01:19:02 (00.00:05)
3. Coma (KTM) – 01:20:09 (00:01:12)
4. Barreda Bort (Honda) – 01:20:38 (00:01:41)
5. Duclos (Sherco) – 01:21:05 (00:02:08)
6. Israel Esquerre (Honda) – 01:21:13 (00:02:16)
7. Casteau (Yamaha) – 01:21:33 (00:02:36)
8. Walkner (KTM) – 01:21:39 (00:02:42)
9. Quintanilla (KTM) – 01:21:55 (00:02:58)
10. Faria (KTM) – 01:21:59 (00:03:02)
I love watching this stuff. One of these years, I need to actually try some off-road. Maybe even a wuss-category enduro.
Austin Vince and Co. did some fantastic riding through Japan on their DR350s, although I don’t know how much was true off-road. Check out the last part of Terra Circa to see them rough camping all over the place.
Certainly no shortage of rough-camping opportunities here with all the mountains around. One of my more memorable New Year’s Mornings involved awakening above the cloud layer, looking behind me to see a unimaginably purple Mt. Fuji behind me and struggling to brew coffee on an underpowered sterno stove. One of those memories to take to the gave, that.
Jeeze. Speeling sux. GRAVE.
You’re in Japan?
You could try the gaijin site: http://www.gaijinriders.com/forum.php
There’s always a few resources to be found on ADV rider as well.
Yeah, I’m in Japan, Viking. And, yeah, I’m a regular at ADVrider. 🙂
Cheers