Thrilling end to 2024 Desafío Ruta 40 as Ricky Brabec takes victory!
Just 15 seconds separated the 2024 Dakar winner Ricky Brabec and Tosha Schareina after 18 hours of rallying through Argentina in what was a mammoth battle to the finish aboard their Honda CRF450 RALLY machines. Ricky took Honda’s 10th win at the Argentine Desafio Ruta 40 Rally as Honda took a 1-2-3 clean sweep of the podium, the first manufacturer to do so in World Rally-Raid Championship history as the Monster Energy Honda Team won every stage of the rally.
The culmination of the rally today was hotly contested between the American and the Spaniard with Brabec starting the stage 1’27” ahead in the overall standings this morning with Tosha the first to get into the action on the 218 km stage; as the defending champion the Spaniard was going to put in a valiant effort to reclaim the spoils. He instantly clawed back time over the early parts of the stage cutting Brabec’s lead to just 22 seconds at one point leaving the final 100km run to the finish to be the focus of the entire rally as the finish came across the horizon at Cordoba.
Schareina sped across the finish line to take his second consecutive stage win of the week adding to his prologue win but it wasn’t quite enough to hold off Brabec who with a 1’12” gap kept hold of the overall lead and took victory. After only contending the jewel in the crown for Rally Raid Dakar Rally so far this year, it means Brabec has taken two victories out of two starts in 2024.
Adrien Van Beveren completed another the fourth Honda podium lockout of a Desafio Ruta 40 stage in 2024 after a consistently high performance all week which saw the Frenchman take a stage win and a third place on the final podium as once more confirmed the speed of the Honda CRF450 RALLY.
Skyler Howes had an outside chance for a podium finish and although he put in a flawless ride finished the day in sixth which put him fourth overall to make it his highest ever finish for Honda. Pablo Quintanilla had some struggles during the week with the differing terrain and difficult navigation but he had a positive final day to cross the line in fifth as he rounded out the five Monster Energy Honda Team riders to be in the top six of the overall standings.
In the World Rally-Raid Championship standings Ricky Brabec has propelled himself up to second, just nine points behind the leader Ross Branch with Adrien Van Beveren a further seven points back. Meanwhile, in the manufacturer standings Honda are back on top as the championship battle hots up heading into the Rallye du Maroc in October.
