The Rally Dos Sertoes concluded today with another stage victory for Marc Coma. The Repsol rider won the 130km special, and recovered the fourth place that he lost yesterday to Rubén Faria in the overall classification. Jordi Viladoms finished third and ended the rally in sixth position in his category, 24th in the overall classification, after an engine breakdown on the marathon stage.
A large part of today`s stage was along a beach on the Atlantic coast, riding a picturesque zone of sandy white coastline before once again heading inland to a zone full of dunes and aquifers. The special went along a fast track that became sandier and sandier right to the very end. The particular difficulty on this stage was that once the riders left the coast there was no navigation with the roadbook and the participants could only orientate themselves by GPS, with an obligation to follow the given route step by step with no possibility of being able to short cut at any point.
The finishing line was in a small shanty town called Sao Miguel de Gostoso, and from there there was a liaison to Natal, where the podium was erected and where the rally came to an official end.
Marc Coma
“I am pleased, because it is always good to end a rally winning the final stage. We have shown that if things go well and we have no problems, we can be in the lead. Today at last we had a stage that was bit different, with a little sand and some dunes. I was grateful for the change in terrain because it was more fun and it was a picturesque special. It was a stage for everybody to enjoy. It took us a few days to pick up the pace, but then things went OK. It was a pity that we had the tyre problems because it has affected our result a lot”.
Jordi Viladoms
“Today we had a stage that was very different from the rest, it was a very pictureque special, along white sandy beaches. We even had a zone with dunes, and before that some tracks along the beach. Today everything was sandy and things went very well. I enjoyed myself riding today, since I felt better in the sand and I was able to open the throttle more than on the other days. The important thing is that we were also able gettting more miles under our belts, to see what this race is like, and get to know it a little, since it is a raid with many variables that we were not familiar with. It is a race where starting it and doing it well is very complicated, thinking about future races, we already know a little about what we will find”.
