2013 Dakar – Stage 1 – Lima > Pisco
Copyright: Marcelo Maragni/Red Bull Content Pool
The 2013 Dakar gets underway with a short 13 kilometre prologue south of Lima. Victory on the stage went to ‘Chaleco’ Lopez ahead of Frans Verhoeven. Cyril Despres (KTM Redbull) finished 5th with his team mate Ruben Faria just behind in 7th.
Cyril Despres
Today’s stage was like a long prologue, designed to decide the start order for tomorrow’s special, and as always there was a certain amount of tactical riding. Just to make it a bit more complicated the organisers gave the stage a ‘coefficient of 5’, meaning that the time for the stage was multiplied by 5. Apparently Chaleco’s tactic was just to go as fast as possible, while Helder Rogrigues was willing to lose some time overall to start down in 29th place tomorrow. Finally I simply decided to ride at a normal pace to finish 5th which seems to me a good position to start tomorrow. My team mate Ruben (Faria) judged it perfectly to finish just behind me.
Starting positions and tactics aside, it was good to get going today. On the 30th there was the start from home in Andorra, then there was the start of the rally yesterday with the briefing, but now at last we start the race in the middle of the desert and that makes me very happy.
Speak to you tomorrow.
Cyril
