Maria Luís Gameiro was unstoppable on Stage 3 of the Morocco Desert Challenge. The Team Motivo JCB driver shone and took second place in the cars and third overall, a historic result for a woman in these parts. A tremendous display that puts the Portuguese driver in ninth place overall, up nine places since yesterday's stage.
It was an intense stage, but one that went perfectly for Maria Luís Gameiro and her navigator, Rosa Romero. The duo in the Mini T1+ in the Motivo JCB colors showed a very strong pace on stage 3, which linked La'ayoune to Boujdour. 264 kilometers against the clock where only one car was faster than Maria Luís.
It's worth remembering that the preparation for this race wasn't the best and that the rider's physical condition wasn't ideal at the start of the week. But the first few kilometers showed that she had the potential to do good things. The 14th place in the prologue was a good omen and the 18th in yesterday's stage, the longest so far, was a sign that the 100% female duo from Team Motivo JCB was ready to do well. Today's second place is confirmation of their excellent work. In yet another stage that mixed more technical sections with fast zones, always with a lot of focus on navigation, Maria Luís did a stupendous job, taking second place despite a one-minute penalty.
Maria Luís couldn't be happier with her result: “What a fantastic day! This second place is very tasty. It was also a day full of challenges, but I always managed to be fast and Rosa did a wonderful job, with top-notch navigation, which allowed us to finish this stage with second place! With this result, we've climbed to ninth place in the overall car standings and the top three isn't that far away. Today is a day to smile and celebrate this excellent result. What we can't do is exaggerate, because there's still a lot of rallying to do, we have a long way to go and tomorrow we have the longest stage of the race. We're going to use this result as fuel for tomorrow, knowing that many difficulties await us. But we've shown that we're ready for the challenge.”
Stage 4, which links Boujdour to Smara, is a challenging 526 km special in the deep Moroccan Sahara. The route passes through a vast gorge, with around 40 km of tricky terrain, close to dangerous chotts full of mud and quicksand. It's a fast stage that favors T1 and T1+ cars, but the difficult navigation and soft sand sections make fuel management critical and time losses likely.
Source: Team Motivo JCB
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