Nandu Jubany arrived at dakar With big aspirations. After making his debut last year with a car that allowed him to finish on the podium with great pace in the two-wheel drive (4×2) category, the Catalan media chef wanted to take a little more risks this time with his co-driver. Marc Sola. Excitement reached its climax; dakar It was huge. After preparing 2,400 New Year’s Eve menus to take home with your team. He was the last participant to arrive at the encampment by plane. dakarslower than others, but on time.

but, rare He was disappointed in the prologue. What was supposed to be the day I entered the race and started enjoying it turned into a nightmare. At the 7.2km mark of the 22km prologue, his car overheated and stopped. And they didn’t know the cause of the problem. After a failed 4-hour attempt, they had to be towed away, allowing them to reach camp having lost over 4 hours in the prologue.

luckily Nandu, prologue time does not count towards general classification. I was concerned about knowing the cause of the problem and whether I could fix it in order to exit Stage 1. And finally in front of MD, around 9pm. (7pm local time, Spanish time) The mechanic explained to Nandu and Marc what had happened.

A cable near the tube at the back of the car caught fire. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. And they understood that the problem could be solved in time.

Since then, we have had to think again about the race and its new starting point. Juvany and Sola will have to start from 198th place, almost at the end of all the cars, and will have to start behind slower cars, meaning they could lose time and take more risks to overtake.

“We were looking for cable and we were both hooked.”

Marc Sola

The problem is, there’s only 30 seconds between when the car in front of them starts and when they start. Therefore, in the first few kilometers you will not be able to fully accelerate due to the huge dust that spreads in front of you. To do so, you need to wait until the distance between the cars increases.

“We start from the back, three people behind, but we are not out of the race. We have to be thankful that something like this happened today in the prologue and not in the first stage tomorrow, because otherwise we would not have finished the Dakar. Now they are protecting the cables. We were there for four hours, but with an electronic problem you never know what it is,” Jubany told MD.

“We were both looking for the cable and we were both going crazy,” said co-pilot Mark Sola.

And we should be grateful. More tomorrow. We’ll have to be a little patient as we’ll start from the back, but in the end it’ll be a race for us to place. I’ll put gas in it, you know.” The cook spoke positively about what will happen in the future, no matter what happened.

“We’ll have to be a little bit patient with starting from the back, but in the end we’ll be in position in the race. We’re going to gas up, as you can see.”

Nandu Jubany

Despite everything, Nandu never lost his smile, a far cry from what many people would do. “There were times when I lost,” he declared. Faced with a broken down car, while the mechanic is fixing the problem that occurred. He smiled because he knew he still had a chance to turn the tables. This race offers a new option: 13 stages to climb each day. Nandu and Mark don’t throw in the towel. on the contrary. After a hard day in the sun and an unexpected start, they maintain their enthusiasm. That’s Dakar.