Second consecutive victory for Marc Coma in the Rally Raid World Championship

As he already did two days ago, Spaniard Marc Coma made use of the chance to be starting from the back due to yesterday's result, to attack and clinch the victory of today's stage. In fact, he had shown himself rather satisfied with the fact of having finished tenth yesterday. Coma knew perfectly well that best options to win this particular rally are not actually starting the first to cover the difficult tracks in Sardinia, so he was happy with a stage in which he had even lost the overall leadership by thirty seconds.

The Spanish rider had to play his cards well today if he wanted to clinch the victory of this second round of the Rally Raid World Championship, so he decided to attack right away in the first special and opened a gap to the second classified rider in the overall standings, Italian Matteo Grazziani. But in the second special and despite knowing that the hard work was already done, the Repsol KTM rider did not relax and controlled his rivals on the tracks that were, as usual in this rally, very technical, sometimes faster and with a complicated navigation.

© Repsol Media Service. Marc Coma was the quickest rider to cover the 51 kilometres of the first special, and finished with an advantage of one minute over the second fastest, Spaniard José Manuel Pellicer, and 2 min 15 s over David Casteu. The Frenchman was the fastest of the second 65-km special, but had Coma right behind, who finished the special in second position 16 seconds later. At the end of the day in the combined results of both stages, Marc Coma had taken the victory of the Rally with an advantage of two minutes over David Casteu, who had also joined him on the podium in Tunisia.

"What I wanted to do today was making good use of the fact of starting from a back position in order to make up for the time lost today," says Marc Coma. "That's what I did in the first special and I was able to recover almost two minutes, while I decided not to take any risks in the second and finish safely."

© Repsol Media Service. "As usual on these days, it can be very nice when the sun shines but it has been raining almost every day and we got really soaked, it even hailed. The leg in general was as always, i.e. technical, over narrow paths and a few faster sections. The motorbike has worked perfectly well and I want to thank the team for the great job they have done throughout the rally."

Two out of two for the 31-year-old Spaniard of the Repsol KTM Team in the Rally Raid World Championship so far, and the current leadership of the overall standings.

(Repsol Media Service)