Luciano Benavidez: “With this Dakar, I reinvented myself as a human being. Two months ago, this was unthinkable for me.”

luciano benavides He is struggling to beat the Touareg. dakar exceptional. Ricky Brabec took the lead from him on the penultimate stage of the world’s toughest rally and is now the Argentine. KTM be forced to return The final stage, just over 100km, took 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

On the final day, unless no one suffers a major setback, the overall ranking will not change significantly, which is realistically impossible. Because of this, Benavidez doesn’t have a final strategy.

“We’ll see how it goes. Ricky is doing very well. He did a great job today and so did I. So I’m happy with the stage and how the day went. I gave my 100% and that calmed me down. So we’ll see how tomorrow goes,” he said upon arriving at camp.

“no, There’s no strategy left to do. Tomorrow I plan to go out after him. Of course, it will not be easy in terms of accounts and differences, because he will get bonuses, but anything can happen in the Dakar and it can surprise you, so let’s see what happens. ”

The beauty of Benavidez’s Dakar is that he suffered a serious cruciate ligament injury on his last rally in Morocco two months ago. It was normal for him to undergo surgery and miss the 2026 edition. But Luciano didn’t want to undergo surgery to be in Saudi Arabia and fight for the Touareg until the end, which was totally crazy.

“No one can say anything about my Dakar and at the end of the day I care about what I believe about myself. In this Dakar I reinvented myself And I have done very difficult things. andComing here in the position I was in two months ago was almost unthinkable.. So no matter what happens tomorrow, it would be a great result to get on the podium and, well, who can say, we’re still together,” he concluded.