‘Cautious’ Mena shines; Santosh loses ground after ‘lens’ trouble

Arequipa (Peru), January 10 

Hero MotorSports’ Oriol Mena displayed brilliant biking skills to finish the difficult third stage at an impressive eighth spot and climb to overall 12th position even as his teammates CS Santosh and Joaquim Rodrigues struggled at the 41st Dakar Rally here.

Rodrigues and Santosh encountered setbacks throughout the third stage before finishing 46th and 64th, respectively. The third stage, from San Juan de Marcona to Arequipa, turned the overall standings upside down with many top contenders across bikes and cars losing their way. In the overall rankings, Rodrigues is 31st and Santosh 42nd. 

Mena said he just tried to be overcautious. “Conditions were difficult with lot of fog in the mountains and many stones. The navigation also was quite tricky,” Mena said. “So I decided to ride with caution, trying to avoid any mistakes and managed to catch all the waypoints.”

Santosh said: “I had the wrong lens on for today’s stage and it set me up for the struggle for most of the first part. So I decided to ride without my goggles, which was really difficult to do. I had a few crashes, lost my way around a waypoint.” — PTI