Rallye du Maroc selected driver quotes after stage 1 09.10.2021: QUOTES Joan Barreda (Monster Energy Honda): 1st “Really happy. It was not easy at the beginning with the dust from the other riders. Then when we got to the dunes I tried to push hard and found a good rhythm.

QUOTES




Joan Barreda (Monster Energy Honda): 1st

“Really happy. It was not easy at the beginning with the dust from the other riders. Then when we got to the dunes I tried to push hard and found a good rhythm.


After the dunes I saw a lot of riders confused but I stayed calm, found the right direction and saved a lot of time. After it was more straight forward and I rode a good stage.”




Ricky Brabec (Monster Energy Honda): 2nd at 01:10

“It was a long day out there. Starting up front would have been tough. It was super windy. At one time I was thinking ‘they’re going to cancel the stage cos I can’t see nothing out here’. I was going really slow, the wind was wild but I met up with Joan (Barreda) and we got out of there. Now there’s four days left and tomorrow’s another long day.”






Toby Price (Red Bull KTM Factory): 25th at 47:53



“We were opening when at about km 120/130 we got caught in a dust storm. It got pretty bad. The boys caught us up there and we started riding back and forward trying to find the piste.


I got lost coming out of a river bed. In all I gave away about 40 minutes or so, probably a bit more. A rough day, not a great way to start off the Rallye du Maroc but there’s still 4 days to go and we’ll just try and make some improvements to the bike and stay on 2 wheels."





Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota Gazoo Racing): 1st



“Not an easy stage. 300 kilometres with soft sand in the middle and the last part stony and rocky. But OK we did a really good job, no punctures.


I think it is good to start the race like this. Tomorrow will be a long stage but we try and do our best. To be honest it wasn’t a good idea to pick tenth place this morning. Too much dust, though we did manage to pass four cars in the dunes…”






Mathieu Serradori (SRT)



“We had a good pace this morning and went really well through the dunes. We opened the piste for a while and Loic (Minaudier) did a good job. Obviously I’m disappointed because we would have fought for the podium here.


Now we will change the engine and restart tomorrow and we’ll be able to try a few things like different tyres to compensate for the new engine restrictor which is causing us some problems.”








Matthieu Perez Photo DPPI / Antonin Vincent