The penultimate stage of Dakar 2024 was challenging for José Ignacio Cornejo, who encountered a technical problem before kilometer 115, practically ruling him out of contention for the final podium. Despite finishing 15th, he managed to maintain the fourth position, but he is now over 14 minutes behind the competitor immediately ahead – his Monster Energy Honda teammate, Adrien van Beveren.
Devastated, the Chilean explained to the event’s official website what happened: ‘At the beginning, I always leave some litres of fuel in the back and when I changed tanks, I noticed it wasn’t working but I just kept going with the rear one as much as I could. I stopped and had to try and see what the issue was, I still don’t know. I tried everything and it wasn’t working, so I decided to just take the front tank out and put some fuel in the back. For the second refuelling, it was very tight to do it only with the rear [tank], so I had to manage my speed a bit to be sure of finishing. I finished with just the reserve in the tank, so luckily I didn’t have to stop again. But I’ve lost some precious minutes in the fight for the podium, so I’m quite sad for that. It was a tough day emotionally, but it’s racing, things like that happen. I need to keep moving forward’.
With the podium practically out of reach, Cornejo is already looking ahead to 2025: ‘I wanted to be up there as much as I could. I was riding well, I was navigating well this year, so I’m quite bummed out by what happened today. As I said, it’s racing, you need to know how to deal with these situations too. We’ll try again next year’.