Ross Branch had a particularly adverse ninth stage of the Dakar 2024 this Tuesday. Despite being the fifth fastest, the Hero MotoSports rider lost a lot of time and is now 7m09s behind the leader of the classification, Ricky Brabec (Monster Energy Honda).
The Botswana rider, second in the classification, admitted to the official Dakar website that he made mistakes, trying to minimize the losses: ‘Today I lost a lot of time, but it was complicated for me. I couldn’t get started, I couldn’t find a flow. I made a couple of stupid navigation mistakes, but it’s the first bad day of the rally for me, so we will accept it. At least I don’t open tomorrow, so maybe we can attack again tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. You have these bad days. I tried to manage and tried to lose as little time as possible, and we’ll have to see tonight if anything changes‘.
The end of the Dakar is approaching and Branch didn’t hide that the pressure is being felt: ‘The pressure is affecting everyone now. It’s the decisive moment and I would have liked us to be a little closer today. But it’s competition, you can’t have a perfect day every day, you make some mistakes and you just have to try to manage. I just tried to keep a cool head for the rest of the afternoon. I had a few moments, so I’m glad I completed another day of the Dakar and we’ll focus on tomorrow‘.
