Even though he finished 6th on Stage 5, Skyler Howes is still Top American at the Dakar Rally. Howes finished 1’10” behind teammate Ricky Brabec after he made a slight error as he relied on the tracks already made in the sand, something that’s easy to do at the speed covered by factory riders in rally-raid. Venturing off on a wrong turn into a canyon consequently lost him around six minutes but after the refuelling stop he managed to salvage precious time back to keep himself in the top five overall.
“Today was frustrating for me,” said a disappointed Howes. “I started so far back that I started relying on the tracks in front of me for navigation, which is not really a smart thing to do. But when you’re in the back like that and because we lost a lot of time yesterday, I was pushing super hard to catch back up some time today. Around 150 kilometres I got to an area where all the tracks kind of disappeared and I was behind the road book enough that I went down the wrong canyon and had to circle back. I probably lost about six minutes just in that one little spot…
I did pretty good after the refuelling, I knew the navigation was going to be tricky again and there were a few areas that I had to kind of wander a little bit to find the good way, but I didn’t have to turn around or anything.”
