Navigating the varied terrain of Stage 2 was no simple feat, but Austin Jones and his co-driver, Gustavo Gugelmin, tackled it very well. Being focused on avoiding any mistakes, the US – Brazilian crew finished the special stage in 2nd position, climbing up to 4th position in the overall classification.

“Stage 2 of Morocco, you know, it's always going to be a fun one. Really stony in the beginning, so it's hard to drive fast. How many kilometers? Today was 290 something kilometers, so about 300. So that's a pretty proper day. You know, it was a good mix of dunes, stones, and you know, fast gravel roads. So, yeah, I mean we got P2 for the day. I'm super happy with that. Put some time on some people that I wanted to and you know, gain some time in the championship and championship points. Always a good day when you do that, but it's hard out here. The rocks are hard, the dunes are really soft. You know, it's a hard place to race. And many people stopped. Yes, today was it was a parking lot out there. There was tons of people crash. There was tons of people braking. Lots of cars. One of my teammates, he broke today. So, you know, it's a bummer to see that, but you know, it's it's all about staying alive out here. So that's what we try to do and try to do it at a fast pace. And I think we accomplished that today. So a couple more days of this and we'll see how it goes,”
Austin Jones summed up the day.

“We just finished the second stage, we did a good job today, we finished second in T3. I'm really tired, I'm destroyed, I mean, so many ditches, so many holes, so many bumps, and the dunes were hard, like, difficult. I'm very tired, so, just wanna eat, rest, and let's keep pushing, with this is the strategy to the end. I have seen today Rokas was there in the middle with prop shaft, I've seen stopped Eryk with Oriol. It was a tough special stage,”
a very tired Gustavo Gugelmin said on arriving in the bivouac.

Text: Rita Kónya
Interview: Sveta Amelichkina
Photo: MCH Photo