Joan Font continues his love affair with the Dakar 2025. Despite the extreme hardness of this first week of competition, the rider from Vic has solved without too many problems, for the moment, each and every one of the stages. This, together with his experience and good management of the race, has allowed him to climb to 24th place overall in the Challenger category. Considering that his war in this edition is not to get a good result, but to help his team in the quick assistance tasks, it is certainly a very positive result.
On Tuesday, the race finally left Bisha, where the Dakar caravan has been based for the first few days, to head north towards Al Henakiyah. The stage before the classic marathon was expected to be less demanding and more technical, but the truth is that it was not comfortable for almost no participant. Neither was it for Joan Font and Sergi Brugué, who, faced with the difficulty of the terrain, full of stones and a lot of dust in suspension, opted not to take any risk and finish the special stage in the best possible way.
Tuesday's stage consisted of 327 timed kilometers, less than initially planned, but not without difficulty: “It's been a very tough first week, in general for everyone. Today it was also tough; the stage was long and at some points it was quite chaotic. There were a lot of rocks, a lot of dust, every time they asked us to overtake, more dust.... But we are here. The important thing is that we got through another day without suffering any problems, today we only had a flat tire”, said the rider from Vic at the end of the special, which he completed in 28th position.
As in previous days, the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team riders, whose main function is to provide quick assistance in the race, enjoyed another day without incidents in the top positions (they were 4th and 7th). This circumstance allows Joan Font and Sergi Brugué to face the stages with a certain tranquility, in order to protect the mechanics of their Can-Am Maverick X3.
“Stages like today's are very punishing for the mechanics. Fortunately, we have the Can-Am in very good shape, because we try to take care of it as much as possible and take very few risks”, explains team co-driver and mechanic Sergi Brugué, ‘After the 48-hour time trial, we had to do a good overhaul of the vehicle because we had two broken shock absorber springs, and also the variator cover... Tomorrow we have a marathon again, today was a day to keep to ourselves’, he says.
This Wednesday, the Dakar will continue towards Al-Ula with a marathon stage of 415 km of special and 173 km of liaison. As was the case two days ago, the riders will have no mechanical assistance on arrival at the bivouac, so once again they will have to be very careful not to make any mistakes. Joan Font and Sergi Brugué feel confident and strong for what is to come: “We are happy and physically we feel very comfortable. We are looking forward to more”.
Automatic translation of the Spanish version
Source: Joan Font / Mediagé Comunicación
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