Second on the first special of the day, 16 seconds behind Marc Coma, and fourth on the second special (at 1’26), Cyril Despres (Red Bull KTM) maintains his second place overall 6’46 behind Marc, with Helder Rodrigues just holding on to third place (at 24’31).

Cyril Despres

“The first special gives an indication of how hard fought the battle is. To finish within 16 seconds after 44 kilometres, when the slightest mistake can cost minutes, is pretty remarkable. The result of the second special shows how technical the terrain is, with Stephane Peterhansel finishing in second place on his ‘little’ 250. That’s to take nothing away from Stephane’s performance. We know that he can still beat the world’s best on certain types of enduro special, but what he has achieved here is truly amazing!. Tomorrow we have one long last special to take us to the final finish, and as we all know, in rally raid anything can happen.”

Pictures: RenataGiorgi.com

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Opening the piste this morning after yesterday’s victory, Cyril Despres was eventually caught by Marc Coma, who went on to win the special and increase his overall lead to 5’03’02. Despite getting lost, Helder Rodrigues holds on to third overall, while ‘retired’ veteran Stephane Peterhansel moves up to sixth place only a few minutes off the podium!

Cyril Despres

Up until the refuelling point, at around kilometre 100, everything was going more or less according to plan. The navigation wasn’t easy, and Marc had managed to take a little time off me, but I was nevertheless ahead of him and opening the piste when we came into the assistance. Then about 6 kilometres in to the last 50 kilometres I maybe lacked a little bit of aggression over some rocky ground (no dust) and Marc was able to get past me. That meant 40 kilometres of eating his dust until right at end of the special where I had a momentary loss of concentration and lost a little more time with the navigation.

Pictures: RenataGiorgi.com

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By winning the second stage of the Sardegna Rally Race Cyril Despres (Red Bull KTM) pulls back to within 1’49.84 of the overall leader Marc Coma. Helder Rodrigues is third at 9.34 while fellow countryman and Cyril’s team mate, Ruben Faria is 7th at 16’29.

Cyril Despres

“The first special was quite overgrown and I must have caught a wild rose or a hit branch because I could taste blood in my mouth. That and a small navigation error cost me a little time overall. Then, having struggled to find my rhythm since the start of the race, this afternoon it all came together. As we have a marathon stage tonight and aren’t allowed to change our tyres I’d planned to take it easy and economise as much rubber as possible. But I was feeling good on the bike, the track was nice and I started to see Marc (Coma’s) dust ahead of me. All of which conspired to encourage me to attack a little and in the end I managed to pull back some useful time. Maybe the fact that I don’t suffer from vertigo helped. For about 8 kilometres we rode along the side of a mountain with a huge sheer drop off to the left. The thing that made me laugh was that at one point there was there were a couple of stones that were marked with two exclamation marks in the road book. Compared with the damage you could have done by falling off the edge they were absolutely irrelevant!

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Starting this morning in 15th place behind the leading 450 competitors, Cyril Despres (Red Bull KTM) managed to get past a sufficient number of riders on the narrow Sardinian tracks to finish the day in second position overall, just 2’25.04 behind Marc Coma. The Italian Mancini was third with Cyril’s team mate Ruben Faria fourth (at 5’09.67).

Cyril Despres

It is not often you get three generations of Dakar winners on the same start line and all on bikes. This morning, down at the port, there was Cyril Neveu, Stephane Peterhansel, Marc Coma and myself, and between us we calculated we held a total of 17 Dakar victories! Although we were all joking around before the stage, you could see that the older generation had lost none of their competitive instinct!

As I’d entered on a 530, and there was no prologue, I had to start behind the 450 world championship contenders and I was a little worried I’d lose too much time in their dust. As it turned out, I managed to get by quite a few on the first special and only finished 27 seconds behind Marc (Coma). The second, shorter special didn’t go quite so well. Again I had to start in 15th place and a low speed crash and a beginner’s navigation error cost me at least two minutes. Now, this evening, I’m just over two minutes down and should have a clearer run tomorrow.

Pictures: RenataGiorgi.com

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On the eve of the Sardegna Rally Race, Red Bull KTM rider Cyril Despres steels himself for a particularly busy month.

Cyril Despres

Although you might not have had much news from me recently, that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting at home doing Sudoku puzzles. More likely I’ve been down the gym, or on the bike, preparing for what promises to be an extremely busy month of June.

The action kicks off this weekend with one of my favourite races of the year, the Sardegna Rally Race. Apart from Chaleco Lopez, to whom I wish a very speedy recovery, all the top riders will be there, and it looks like there will be a particularly fierce battle for victory. With extremely tight trails and lots of navigation, I have chosen to leave my ‘big’ 450 rally bike at home and have instead entered on a specially prepared 530 KTM EXC enduro bike.

Later on in the month I will be participating in the KTM Mania in the South of France, before heading off to Austria for the famous Erzberg Rodeo, an extreme enduro that always attracts a huge and enthusiast crowd of spectators to KTM’s heartland. And just to make sure I don’t get bored between races, I have also entered Infront Sports Media’s three day cycle race in Switzerland. As always I promise to keep you informed of my progress.

All the best

Cyril

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