The Old Friends Rally Team duo strengthened their lead in the World Rally Raid Championship
Another stage and another victory. Despite their more conservative approach, the young duo, Alexandre Pinto and Bernardo Oliveira, who are making their Dakar Rally debut, recorded another victory today, this time in the FIA Rookie Challenge, which the team has been absolutely leading since yesterday, along with the SSV classification of the World Rally Raid Championship, where they added another three points today, reinforcing their respective leads (drivers and navigators). The Old Friends Rally Team duo spent 5h55m28s today covering the 487 km timed stage from Al Duwadimi to Riyadh.
“Since the rest day we've been adopting a conservative pace to take the car to the end of the Dakar and, if possible, get the best result. As we've always said, we want to finish and accumulate as much experience as possible. We're leading the World Championship, we're leading among the rookies and we're fourth among the SSVs. What we have to do is manage the race until the end and see what happens. There are still a lot of races ahead of us. Looking back over the days following the rest day, we had the sixth stage, which was very long for us. We had a puncture and had to change a transmission during the special. We drove around 150 km at night to finish the stage. Yesterday was the same. It was also very long, but today was more relaxed,” said Alexandre Pinto.
Tomorrow sees the ninth stage of the Dakar Rally 2025. The convoy sets off from Riyadh towards Harad. It will take 589 km, 357 of which will be timed. The road to Haradh will take the competition south on mainly fast tracks. This stage will be an appetizer for what is yet to come.
Automatic translation of the Portuguese version
Source: Alexandre Pinto / A2 Comunicação
