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 | AD Desert Challenge: Francisco "Chaleco" Lopez restarts and is Fifth.
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The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge is getting to its end with the fourth and penultimate stage was carried out Wednesday, in the burning desert of Rub Al Khali. Last night, the Team Giofil Aprilia Racing found the problem that forced Lopez to drop out the stage. They thought it was an electrical problem and it fact it was much simpler: an electric cable came in the fuse box and, because of vibrations it got uncoated and made a mass.
Discomfort within the team that had to let go the great result they were getting day by day for such a triviality. Wednesday´s stage was composed of dunes, a constant of the Desert Challenge, hard dunes with cuts and very difficult sand that riders must face highly focused.
The timed section started at Moreeb´s bivouac, and finished after 314 km at the beautiful Qasr Al Sarab Resort, which named the stage. After 108km transfer, riders have returned to the bivouac of Moreeb, the last one of the Desert Challenge 2010.
Lopez started in the 51st position this morning, and from then on, he "trapped" riders all the way long, and he passed CP1 with the 11th time. The run lasted for the whole timed section, overtaking over and over again, Chaleco left behind 40 competitors. He arrived with the 5th best time, seven minutes from the leader of the day, Gaugain.
It was a good test for Chaleco, who started forty minutes after the first rider and found the sand all soft. Obviously, after yesterday´s penalty he didn´t want to take many risks, and he also felt disappointed because of the misfortune of the previous day. Now he just waits for the end of the 20th version of the Desert Challenge, and tomorrow he will start in a very good position for the last day of the race.
Tomorrow is the last stage of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which will take the rally to the Capital of the Emirate, where the race started last Friday, concluding at Yas Marina´s circuit with 306 km of timed section from a total of 443 tiring kilometers. After the start riders will find dunes for a brief part, and it promises to be a pretty fast stage, like in the beginning.
Francisco Lopez: "Today I drove without forcing, after discovering what happened yesterday, I felt uncomfortable. It´s silly to throw away a result for such a stupid problem. Now the result is compromised, so let´s finish this rally and think about the next one coming up."
Leading positions on Leg 4 (Cars)
01) Leonid Novitskiy / Andy Schulz I 18:13:01
02) Laurent Rosso / Francois Borsotto I 21:50:33
03) Yannick Comagnac / Jean- luc Martin I 29:03:17
Leading positions on Leg 4 (Bikes)
01) Marc Coma I 16:56:33
02) Sean Gaugain I 17:06:19
03) James West I 17:14:19
2010/03/31 | 19:47 CET | ARTICLE: MR/HS/BAUER
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