Honda takes second consecutive Dakar win
For the second successive year, Honda has taken the overall victory in the Dakar Rally’s motorcycle category with Argentinian Kevin Benavides finishing ahead of 2019 winner and Monster Energy Honda teammate Ricky Brabec second - the first ever American winner.
It was a first Dakar Rally win for the 32-year-old Benavides, who rode his first Dakar Rally in 2016, and the first time in 34 years that Honda took the top two spots - Dakar legends Cyril Neveu (a five- time winner) and Edi Orioli (a four-time winner) were first and second on NXR750Vs in 1987.
The 43rd edition Dakar Rally (the second in Saudi Arabia) comprised a prologue and twelve stages and covered nearly 5,000 miles in a counter-clockwise loop around Saudi Arabia, starting and finishing in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Approximately 3,000 miles of the route were in timed (or “special”) stages, and Benavides had a winning tally of 47 hours, 18 minutes, 14 seconds, less than five minutes better than Brabec.
It was a dominant performance by Honda Racing Corporation’s factory rally effort, whose CRF450 Rally-mounted riders won nine of 12 stages plus the prologue - two stages by Benavides, three stages and the prologue by Brabec, three stages by Joan Barreda and one stage by Jose Cornejo. Barreda and Cornejo were forced to drop out of the race - the former after missing a fuel stop and running out of fuel, and the latter following a hard crash.
