•The Pons Rallysport team completes the second part of the 48-hour chrono, in the dunes of the Empty Quarter, after accumulating 15 hours and 49 minutes in the special.â¨
•Pons and Jaume Betriu's Can-Am Maverick X3 runs smoothly, after the previous day's breakdown, and the Lleida team finally has its first clean day.â¨
"Time is the least of it, after 7 hours stopped in the desert, but the personal satisfaction of having overcome such a complicated situation is priceless. We continue!".â¨
Eduard Pons and Jaume Betriu are still in the race after a sixth stage that quickly became very difficult. The grit, strength, never giving up, and trying to keep going despite everything have paid off for the Pons Rallysport team. On Friday, the team from Lleida completed the 48-hour chrono, the feared queen stage of the Dakar. Their Can-Am Maverick X3 left them stranded on Thursday, but today it ran smoothly and allowed them to reach the finish line in Shubaytah.
The experience of the Lleida team during these two days in the inhospitable Empty Quarter desert has been "incredible," according to Eduard Pons without hesitation. The 15 hours and 49 minutes the team took to complete the 547 timed kilometers clearly illustrate the odyssey they experienced. Of this time, about 7 hours were spent trying to repair the Can-Am Maverick X3; the rest, 8 hours and 45 minutes, was non-stop driving and navigation among the dunes.
"Today we had almost 400 kilometers of pure desert to the limit ahead of us. Jaume did a brutal job with the navigation. I'm learning a lot in the dunes thanks to his experience in open desert. It was our first clean day," Pons asserts.⨠â¨"Time is the least of it, after 7 hours stopped in the desert, but the personal satisfaction of having overcome such a complicated situation and everything we've been through is priceless. We continue!", adds the driver from Lleida.⨠â¨
After the technical problems of the previous day, today the car started normally and ran well. Eduard Pons elaborates on the problem suffered in the first part of the 48-hour chrono: "At kilometer 101, the car stopped. It was an electrical problem in the turbo; we spent 7 hours repairing it. Jaume did a magnificent job; we changed everything and checked everything. Then, surprisingly, it worked again, but after 12 kilometers, it happened again. The problem recurred." ⨠â¨Fortunately, when they were already preparing to spend the night in the open desert, suddenly the car worked again. "We managed to reach camp 'A' at night. It was brutal to drive in the dark in the middle of the desert; it's better not to have seen where we were going. With the tent and sleeping bags, we were able to rest for 6 hours until, this morning, the car decided to start well. The ghost that has been chasing us since the beginning of the Dakar was having a good day," Pons quips.
The positive takeaway from this authentic Dakar odyssey is that the Pons Rallysport team has completed all stages and is fiercely defending a position in the general classification of the SSV category. "This is the Dakar; very far behind, but we're still in the race," says Pons. The number 407 Can-Am Maverick X3 now occupies 16th overall position, although far from the Top 10 it held until reaching the Empty Quarter (the team was 9th after the fifth stage).
Another positive point is that this Saturday is the rest day in Riyadh, which will allow the Pons Rallysport team to recover their strength to face the second week of the race, with another six stages planned. The event will resume on Sunday from the Saudi capital.