Joan Font continues to make steady progress at the Dakar after a third stage in which strategy and risk management were crucial. Although it wasn’t billed as an especially rocky day, the reality is that four-wheeled vehicles suffered greatly. Among them was Joan Font, who punctured almost as soon as the special began—a setback that not only forced him to stop and change the wheel, but also to rethink the rest of the stage (421 kilometres of timed section plus 315 kilometres of liaison) with a much more conservative approach.
The Dakar organisation has raised the difficulty another notch in this edition with a third stage in which Joan Font was forced to switch into survival mode—something that hadn’t been necessary until now. “It was an incredibly tough stage, all about endurance. I punctured a tyre right at the start and had to be extremely cautious; we still had more than 400 kilometres ahead and we couldn’t afford another puncture. The first kilometres were an absolute slaughterhouse—there were rocks everywhere. The special was very long; if you puncture two more tyres, you’re stranded,” the Catalan driver explained at the end of the special, still with 251 kilometres of liaison to go.
However, as the kilometres ticked by, the BE Racing driver managed to leave the initial pressure behind and delivered a solid second half of the stage, improving his position at every split time to finish 27th in the Challenger category. “We focused on managing the stage—trying to go fast where it was safer and being very cautious in the trickier sections, including navigation, which was quite a bit more difficult today. There’s a lot of racing still ahead; we’re on the doorstep of the marathon—today wasn’t a day to take risks,” he added.
Despite these small setbacks, Joan Font and Adrià Guillem are putting together a relatively smooth Dakar Rally—something that doesn’t always happen given their role as support crew. It’s worth remembering that the main—and practically the only—mission of the Catalan duo in this Dakar is to assist the Saudi Next Gen team, which unfortunately hasn’t had luck on its side in this first week of competition: one of their drivers, Abdullah Alshegawi, is already out of the race—he is competing in the Dakar Experience category—while the other, Hamza Bakhashab, lost a lot of time today in the first 100 kilometres of the special.
Still, Joan Font knows all too well that everything can change from one day to the next—something that’s common at the Dakar and in his recent participations. This Wednesday, 7 January, one of the major highlights of this edition awaits him: a particularly demanding stage with 452 kilometres against the clock (530 kilometres in total), which will also be the first part of the marathon—one of two planned this year. The main objective on this fourth day will be to avoid any serious issue that could compromise the car, because at the end of the special, drivers and co-drivers will have to carry out the vehicle’s maintenance themselves. The following day, a slightly shorter second leg awaits them—427 kilometres including special and liaison—until they reach Hail, where they will rejoin the rest of the team.
Source: Joan Font official press release
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