DAY 1 - Stage 1B
The day started pretty frosty - everyone was packed up as if they were going to ski and the first 60km stage was amazing, fog and rain! The day got off to a good start, actually not too much happened up to km250. I didn't make any mistakes and didn't risk anything. The rest of the stage was then unfortunately to "tick off" .... at km 260 I made a huge mistake in the navigation and lost an infinite amount of time (about an hour and a half)! I didn't find a waypoint, although I was pretty safe with the road book. Suddenly riders came up to me from all directions? Everyone was looking for the vital waypoint. On top of that, there were also some top drivers from the car class, such as Nani Roma, Matthias Ekström and others ?? What happened here? A bunch of desperate pilots were buzzing around like ants! Nani Roma? Matthias Ekström ?? ... cool - it's the way out of here and I followed their tracks.
I would have been better off navigating myself, because they also didn't know what they were doing! After wild back and forth I spotted a helicopter at some point ... far, far away. I thought there must be one of the fast guys somewhere, took aim and drove towards the helicopter. After an endless 30 minutes, I got back on the right slope. At 290 km a Japanese was stuck in the dunes and since no one helped him, this job also was left for me. So at least today I did a good thing for someone :) The hope for a top placement (Top 30) is history. But maybe the pressure I put on myself has now also disappeared?
On such days you have to learn and grow with experience. Some others were trapped even worse and the positive thing about the day is that I didn't fall, I'm still in the race, chasing my lost places is now the goal - of course I'll get that back đ
Tomorrow we will even start a marathon stage. That means .... no mechanics and no outside help in the evening, including sleeping in the tent đ
Here you can see the crime scene of the day on the live tracking ... we were really wrong :(
The lines show the chaos that existed around waypoint PK280 ! Not only the bikers had enormous problems, the cars too.
The light blue & dark blue lines from Mason & Bradley were perfect! All others including myself were a drama.
RED is Matthias Ekström (Audi), purple is Barreda Bort, mine is green .
Friends - I don't take this as an "excuse or even a spot to others - but only to underline what was going on there!
The supposedly greatest "navigation disaster" was experienced by AUDI SPORT & Carlos SAINZ in front of the PK280 ...
As the world was still in order :)
Thick jacket, scarf & handguards almost like skijoring - even the morning was not exactly an enlightenment