Dakar stage 11 – Coma homes in on Dakar number five

Factory KTM rider Marc Coma took a step closer to securing Dakar win number five with another solid day’s work on stage 11 of the 2015 event. The 38-year-old Spaniard initially lost time to his closest rival Paulo Goncalves with just 5m 12s separating the two men – an incredibly small margin after 11 days of racing. But Goncalves has subsequently been given a 15m time penalty for swapping the engine on his Honda CRF 450 on last night’s marathon stage.

Coma is so far yet to change his engine, but now that Goncalves has he may be tempted to do it himself. Before the race started KTM said their intention was to complete the entire 10,000km race without an engine change.

Coma said: “We’ve managed to get through it. It’s always stressful when you have to work on the bike, but everything is ok. There is still a difficult day to complete tomorrow then again on Saturday. I’m not thinking about the finish yet. We’ll see, because there are still a fair few kilometres to go, but for the moment I’m happy”.

Depite closing down Coma on the stage before losing time to his rival due to the engine change, Goncalves remained upbeat and determined to fight.

Goncalves said: “I had a problem with my engine yesterday and had to change it. Since it was a marathon stage, of course one of our riders had to stay in Cachi. It was Jeremias Israel who gave his engine. It’s very brave to have done that. It’s the end of the race for him so I’m going to try and get the best position so that I can dedicate it to him. Because of the penalty, I’ve given a free 15 minutes to all my rivals, but that’s the rules of the race and they’re the same for everybody. It was already difficult 7 minutes behind, even if I managed to regain around two minutes on the stage today. But now it’s even more difficult. That said, others can also have the problem that I had yesterday, so it’s not too late to hope to finish in the top position.”

Following Goncalves’ and team-mate Barreda’s engine change and subsequent time penalty the stage was won by hard-charging Ivan Jakes onboard his factory supported KTM. He won from factory rider Ruben Faria and Australian sensation Toby Price, who is currently third in the overall standings in his first ever Dakar.

Price said: “I can’t get too excited just yet. Two days is still a long way away. There are still a lot of kilometres to cover. We’re just trying to do the best we can, stay fit and healthy, keep the bike in good shape and that’s just been my plan the whole way, pretty much. We’re doing all we can and at this stage we’re having fun while we’re doing it. It’s not too far from the finish. Today was not so bad. It wasn’t extremely fast, but it was a good clean run with nothing crazy. You couldn’t afford to run wide on turns today. It was just a good clean day.”

Simon and Llewelyn Pavey continued their relentless and gutsy performance to get to the finish. The father and son team are now riding together as a team and finished in 67^th and 68^th places respectively. In the overall standings Llewelyn is 62^nd, 20 minutes ahead of his dad in 63^rd.

The penultimate Stage of the 2015 Dakar will see riders leave Termas Rio Honda and head to Rosario – the huge 1025km day will be made up of a 725km liaison and 298km timed special

Stage 11 (Provisional Results)

1, Ivan Jakes, SVK, KTM 3:28.0801.35
2, Ruben Faria, POR, KTM at 0.08
3, Toby Price, AUS, KTM at 0.42
4, Marc Coma, ESP, KTM at 1.05
5, Pablo Qunitanilla, CHI, KTM 2.38
6, Helder Rodrigues, POR, Honda, at 3.50
7, Stefan Svitko, SVK, KTM at 3.53
8, Hans Vogels, NLD, KTM at 4.17
9, Frans Verhoeven NLD, Yamaha at 5.34 Joan Barreda, ESP, Honda at 3:26.33
10, Olivier Pain, FRA, Yamaha at 6.11

Overall Standings after Stage 11
1, Coma at 41:43.03
2, Goncalves at 21.12
3, Price at 31.43
4, Qunitanilla at 33.15
5, Svitko at 48.07
6, Faria at 1:40.43
7, Casteu, at 1:46.51
8, Sanz at 2:13.20
9, Jakes, at 2:24.45
10, Pain at 2:55.17
10, Vogels, at 3:24.45