The penultimate stage of the Dakar 2024 was complicated for José Ignacio Cornejo, who suffered a technical problem before kilometer 115 – which practically took him out of the fight for the final podium. The 15th time allowed him to maintain fourth position, but now he is more than 14 minutes behind the rival immediately ahead – Monster Energy Honda teammate Adrien van Beveren.
Desolated, the Chilean explained to the official event website what happened: ‘At the beginning, I always leave a few liters of fuel in the rear and when I changed tanks I noticed that it wasn’t working, but I continued with the rear as long as I could. I stopped and had to try to see what the problem was, I still don’t know. I tried everything and it didn’t work, so I decided to just take out the front tank and put some fuel in the back. It was very tight to do it only with the rear [tank] for the second refueling, so I had to manage my speed a bit to make sure I finished. I finished only with the reserve in the tank, so luckily I didn’t have to stop again. But I lost some precious minutes in the fight for the podium, so I’m very sad about it. It was an emotionally tough day, but it’s racing, things like this happen. I need to move on‘.
With the podium practically out of reach, Cornejo is already looking towards 2025: ‘I wanted to be there as much as I could. I was riding well, I was navigating well this year, so I’m very upset about what happened today. Like I said, it’s racing, you need to know how to deal with these situations too. We’ll try again next year‘.
