Stage 3 - Driver Quotes

Cyril Despres

It was a very complicated special stage for me! It didn't start well this morning, because when I hit a hole, I ripped off a fingernail on the clutch. 60 km later, my compass repeater stopped. We reached the mountains and I wanted to keep the same pace, because I knew that Marc was riding very fast in front of me, but when we got to a stream, I must have slowed the pace when I had to check my GPS. To cap it all, I broke my rear brake on the big climb, so the descent was very tricky, but I made sure I was careful. Over the last 50 kilometres, I couldn't see many tyre tracks, so I wasn't sure that Marc was up ahead. In the end, I finished first and I've been told that he chose the wrong track so that's going to be to my advantage. It's good for my position, even if I'm never happy about other people's setbacks.

Marc Coma

After 170 km, there was a different track for the bikes and the cars. I checked the road-book and thought I was on the right track, but then I saw that wasn't the case, because the next note was after 8 km and it wasn't correct, so I turned round! 16 km is a lot! So, after that, I went on the attack to tray and gain back some time, but today was a difficult day, even if the scenery was spectacular... Well, in the end, I've lost 13 minutes. It's a lot, but when you make a mistake, you shouldn't be surprised that the gaps open up. That's racing for you. Yesterday was my day, but today definitely wasn't!

Nani Roma

We'll have to wait for the other cars to arrive, but for the moment, it's good and we are happy about it. We drove really well with Michel, without making any mistakes, but we were fortunate to set off later on, follow the tyre tracks and see where to brake. But all in all, it's more important for us that we drove really well, rather than the stage victory.

Stephane Peterhansel

We were going well when we got a first slow puncture with a bit of wood in the tyre, so we stopped to change the wheel, but only after trying to put a bit more air in the tyre, which was a bad idea, because we lost more time. We were in front of Nasser at that point. He must have made a navigational mistake, or something like that, because we didn't see him. He took advantage of us changing the wheel to overtake. After that we got another puncture on the rear left wheel in the mountains. All in all, those two stops add up to 5 minutes lost at the finishing line.

Krzysztof Hołowczyc:

When we drove through the water there was really bad visibility and we took a branch which was really heavy properly full on in the front of the car. It broke the windscreen. One time we lost about 30 seconds maybe more because we followed the motorcycles and they went the longer way. We had to reverse after 500 metres but we had to go very slow to avoid hitting any of the motorcycles because they were going the opposite way. It was a good stage, for sure, a good stage without technical problems. Everything was ok.

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