Spain’s Marc Coma of KTM won the opening motorcycle stage at the Rally Dakar Argentina-Chile 2009 from from Saladillo to Santa Rosa with a 22:05-minute advantage over second best Polish Jacek Czachor. The Catalan driver took 2h, 46 m to drive 371 km, while French Cyril Despres, current bike champion finished the stage 41 minutes after Coma after suffering a puncture.

“The problem with this special was the distance” said Coma. “I saw that Despres had problems with his back wheel after filling up at control point two. After that, I tried to open up the gap. I paced myself, waiting for the moment. On this route, there was little work to do with the bike, so I tried to ride my race to avoid problems.”

Sunday’s second stage ran from Santa Rosa to Puerto Madryn with a 237km special and was won by Dutch rider Frans Verhoeven.

The KTM rider finished the 237km special ahead of France’s former champion Cyril Despres (KTM) by 40 seconds while another Frenchman David Fretigne (Yamaha) was third, 1min 04sec adrift.

Spanish rider Marc Coma finished around 12 minutes behind Verhoeven but still retains the overall lead.

Source | motorsport and
motociclismo

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