Dakar 2021 Stage 9 | Big Shock Racing’s Martin Macik and team take the win

Stage 9 of Dakar Rally saw Big Shock racing’s Martin Macik taking the win. Macik blazed the stage with a time of 05:05:54 hours. Following him were two out of the four trucks from team Kamaz-Master, at P2 was Airat Mardeev and at P3 was Dmitri Sotnikov. Mardeev at P2 was just 02:27 minutes behind Macik while Dmitri Sotnikov was 10 seconds behind Mardeev, 02:37 minutes behind the leader.

Stage 9 started from Neom and finished in Neom and was filled with incredible scenery along the coast of the Red Sea, not that the drivers could pay much attention to it. Stage 9 was a total of 579km including a 465km special which was full of dust which was impeding vision for competitors and made a lot of them lose time in navigation.

In the overall ranking, team Kamaz-Master’s Dmitri Sotnikov retains his leadership and is ahead of teammate Anton Shibalov by a good 45 minutes. All four of the Kamaz-Master trucks stand in the top seven positions in the overall rankings, with three out of the four squads acquire the top three positions.

At the end of stage nine, Dmitri Sotikov said, “It wasn’t easy, but I think the main problem today was the dust. We lost about two and a half minutes with navigation. We stayed for a long time behind the Maz of Wiśniewski as well as a Tatra and we lost a lot of time because it was full of dust. First of all the Maz of Wiśniewski got a puncture and we passed him, but after that, maybe after about ten kilometres there was a Tatra with a puncture too and we passed it as well. Then it was rather clear and we built up some speed, but at one moment we saw Anton Shibalov and followed him until the finish of the stage. It wasn’t an easy day. It was rather long and there were a lot of stones. We tried to be very careful because we understood that it would not be a good idea to change the tyres today. In the second half, we were just watchful and careful”.

Stay tuned for stage 10 updates that commence from Neom to AlUla, that is 583km with a 342km special. You can read more updates about the Dakar here