A third stage with a lot of water on the Dakar: many participants had serious difficulties to reach the finish line.
Floods in the desert race. The 2023 Dakar Rally has been affected, in its third stage, by heavy rains that have forced the timed special on Tuesday to be neutralized. Some pilots found themselves in serious difficulties to cross the rivers that formed in full course, among them the Spanish Cristina Gutiérrez.
The rain has made an appearance in Saudi Arabia, as the Dakar passes through Ha’il, on the fourth day of the race. In a country where it barely rains a few days a year, the participants have had to face such difficult conditions that they have led to the end of the stage almost 70 kilometers before the finish line, since the medical helicopters could not fly in the event of an accident.
Highway to Ha’il 🌧️🚚🚗#Dakar2023 pic.twitter.com/nKh37E43LJ
— DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 3, 2023
The images, published by Dakar himself, are horrifying. The rain, which fell heavily, accompanied by hail and wind, caused flash floods in the final part of the stage. Due to the accumulation of rain, some pilots came to find themselves in serious difficulties to cross the enormous rivers formed.
Those who have suffered the most have been the Side by Side, the light vehicles driven by drivers like Cristina Gutiérrez from Burgos. The one from Red Bull and the Chilean Chaleco López got stuck in a river and had to receive help to get their respective buggies out of the water.
Even the big beasts that are the trucks had to face the dammed water on the route, not an easy task as the images show. The motorcycle riders furthest behind also encountered these conditions and had to overcome the same difficulties.
“A storm began to fall and it was stronger and stronger, there was a small river that finally was not a small river, but a tremendous river,” declared ‘Chaleco’, according to the biobioChile website. “We stayed there and in five minutes the water practically passed over the top. I never got out of the car, because if I got out I knew I was going to lose it,” he added.
“We floated several meters, we were on the other side, a truck took us out, we stopped there for a long time so that everything could dry. We already ruled out the race. Very cold, hypothermia and we were about to lose the car, which was the most complex thing”, he commented.
At the end of the stage, the participants completed the rest of the link to the camp, where they found a ‘bivouac’ completely wet and muddy, conditions that they certainly did not expect to find in this part of the world.
