There is no point in running, you have to start on time. Guerlain Chicherit (Mini) made this maxim his own by finishing 2nd in the 1st stage of the Dakar 2025 this Saturday, January 4 in Bisha (Saudi Arabia), when he was the last marquee driver to report to the bivouac. A perilous personal context which disconnected it from the great upheaval… until this opening stage.
“It was a complicated year. The program was difficult to put together, the big sponsor took time to validate. This put the program and myself in a very complicated situation. I arrived at the Dakar not being well focused on the objective”he declared.
Curiously, Guerlain Chicherit was able to reverse this state of mind to create a positive mentality. “In these moments, the psychological part is extremely important. Either I remained in a negative spiral, telling myself that I arrived insufficiently prepared and in panic. Or maybe I was more like I didn’t see the pressure coming because I didn’t have time to think about the race. This morning, I managed to convince myself that it was a good method! I left motivated as never before. »
The former freestyle ski champion left with the desire to aim for victory from this 412 km stage. However, some problems arose on his way, and not the least…
“First, we lost GPS signal, like pretty much everyone else. Except that I started 30th, I had a lot of dust in front of me, we can see the damage because of that,” he points out, pointing to the missing front hood and damaged windshield. Editor’s note). We took risks to overtake the cars. »
Then came an immense fear, in the middle of the desert. The Mini JCW T1+ started to catch fire! “A body panel has moved in front of the exhaust pipe, explains Chicherit. There was panic! I’ve already caught fire twice with Alex (Winocq, his co-pilot. Editor’s note) in rally raid. These are bad memories, you can’t do anything, you see the car go up in smoke, it’s terrible. With a car carrying so many liters of gasoline, things can end very badly, very quickly. There, as soon as we smelled the beginning of the smoke, we didn’t ask ourselves the slightest question, we stopped. With Alex, we threw sand on the flames. To prevent the fire from starting again, we tore off the body panel in question. »
Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winocq did not slow down all day, unlike most of the favorites. In return for this stage victory, the French duo will have to start in 2nd place on Sunday, and open the 48H Chrono special, without benefiting from the bikers’ tracks because the two- and four-wheel courses will be separate. A format feared by the caravan, but which does not panic the driver.
“For the 48H Chrono, there shouldn’t be too many dunes. If this is the case, winning the stage will be very complicated. If there aren’t many, which I’m betting on, I’ll be able to get by. Tomorrow (Sunday), I will attack. The favorites shouldn’t take me back for more than a quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes would simply put me 5 minutes behind me overall. (on Nasser Al-Attiyah and Sébastien Loeb in particular. Editor’s note). And then it would be up to them to open the stages. »
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