After a gruelling two weeks of racing in the Saudi-Arabian desert, Three Bridges’ Daniel ‘Chucky’ Sanders has achieved a very respectable seventh-place finish in the Dakar Rally.
It was always going to be a tough ask for Sanders to get back into the top racers after battling food poisoning on Stage Five, but he did make up a fair bit of a ground with his final time just under 26 minutes behind overall winner Kevin Benavides.
Sanders had second-place finishes in both Stage 11 and Stage 12 and said the first week of Dakar was an up and down week.
“We had a lot of positives at the start, had some good speed and good results and then I got a stomach bug and I got really sick for a couple days. Hopefully in the next couple days we can tighten up the gap up the front and fight for the win,” he said after Stage Eight.
“It was good to push and learn the pace again and push out front – that was good fun. I think we’re in a good spot for tomorrow [Stage 12]. It was just good fun out there. It was pretty hot and demanding, but it was good fun.”
“I’m slowly getting a little bit better in the dunes, getting back into the rhythm.”
