Report Below Day 5

✖️Fifth stage of Tuareg Rally "a super nice day"✖️
Almost all faces were on "yes!" in the Taghit bivouac, where the participants of the Tuareg Rally returned after the fifth stage. All of them were happy. "What a wonderful day."
The stage brought the participants from Beni Abbes back north to Taghit in Algeria. The route went through the same area as on Day 2, but was quite different. Even the leader of the Pro-motor rankings, the Lithuanian Arunas Gelazninkas, was having a good time despite technical misery. "Halfway through the first part of the stage I had a problem with the rear that caused the chain to break," the number 78 said. "Before I had more or less repaired it, it was 20, 30 minutes later. I drove very quietly to CP1 and in the neutralized part I could replace the chain. Then I put the gas on to try to make up for as much time as possible. It was a wonderful stage, with lots of sand and almost no stones. That's how I like it."
Making up for twenty minutes while the difference in the classification at the start of the stage was only a minute, seemed an almost impossible task for the Lithuanian, but he managed in the dunes and won the stage for the third consecutive time, even building up the gap to the Frenchman Dominique Robin and the Algerian Abdelkader Mebarki, the numbers 2 and 3 in the rankings.
Number 4, the Belgian Mathieu Delmotte, watched eagerly, but realized that he is probably too far behind: an hour. “I had planned to finish on the podium, but I already lost it on the first day when I crashed in the labyrinth and half the bike broke down. I was lucky to have reached the finish that day. To be in the top 3, some of the others will have to run into bad luck or miss a CP, giving him two or four hours of punishment. But I don't mind finishing fourth. Enjoying is much more important and I have done just that all day long.”
Delmotte was very pleased with the stage. “I have been cheering in my helmet, that is how much fun I had. It was a super nice day, with small but very nice dunes in the beginning, a nice broad oued and a really beautiful valley with dunes and palm trees. It was a very varied stage, perhaps the nicest of the rally, because I think it is a bit disappointing in terms of variation.”
Dutchman Wouter de Graaff, twelfth in the classification at the start of the stage but tenth at the end of it, was the third Pro motorcyclist to dive into the dunes for the final part. “Two Algerians, Mebarki and Hajj Mohamed Zeghir, were sitting in front of me and were pushing so hard that I couldn't get to them, but that doesn't matter. I think I did well, but more importantly, I really enjoyed myself. What a nice day.”
Also in the Expert class, for riders who have too little experience for the most difficult parts of the dunes, or who simply don’t want to have a too hard time, it was enjoyment all along. The Algerian rider Alaeddine Bengherifa, from the same team as Abdelkader Mebarki, arrived at the gas pump so late after the first part of the stage that the station had ran out of petrol. He got a few liters from someone from a plastic jerry can, but the fuel turned out to be contaminated with sand. “I drove the last 7 kilometers of the stage with a faltering motor, which stopped all the time. That was not so nice. But otherwise it was formidable. Much nicer, but also more difficult than the stage on the way south to Beni Abbes. The sand was softer and there were more tracks, making it more difficult to drive. "