Dakar Rally 2022

Dakar Stage 7 in a nutshell:
What a start to the second week of the 2022 Dakar Rally. “This week is different. The first week is behind us and we are now going to attack and fight until the finish.” So said stage seven winner Jose Cornejo. He wasn’t kidding.
The day began with some drama for Daniel Sanders as the Australian crashed on the road liaison and goes out of the rally. At time of writing, exactly what happened is not known but the team says Chucky has broken his wrist and elbow.
As riders continued to the start, Sam Sunderland therefore inhereted the job of opening the stage having finished second behind his teammate on Friday.
Things did not go well for Sam (or any of the early riders) with “difficult navigation” the phrase of the day. After a couple of waypoints were hard to find, Sam finished in 28th place, over 25 minutes behind the winner and lost the rally lead.
It was a similar story for second rider away, Matthias Walkner. The lead KTM rider lost over 22 minutes after finishing 24th. He remains second scratch though and is joined on the provisional podium by his teammate Kevin Benavides who was second today by just 44 seconds.
Saturday’s rest day worked miracles on Joan Barreda who was third fastest on stage seven, 2:51 behind his teammate Cornejo.
That all means a shuffled pack on the scratch results sheets with Adrien Van Beveren now the rally leader by over five minutes, the first time he or Yamaha have been on top since the 2018 Dakar .
The cards fell nicely for Adrien today, a difficult day for navigation, he pushed when he needed to and after finishing in 10th, has a good start position tomorrow. “It's still far from over,” said AVB. “I intend to push hard until the end. If it all falls into place, it will be fantastic.”
Sunderland still lies P4 scratch, close in time to Walkner and Benavides with Sherco’s Lorenzo Santolino fifth.
Ross Branch was back in the race today following his stage six DNF and posted P12 but his result won’t count overall.