Alexandre Pinto, reigning World Rally-Raid Champion in SSV, ended his participation in the Rallye du Maroc earlier than planned — an event where he had impressively won the first three stages counting for the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC).
“The Rallye du Maroc ended earlier for us. Yesterday, in the fourth stage, we faced more issues and couldn’t finish. We didn’t manage to secure another strong result here in Morocco, as we had hoped. With the world title already clinched, our goal was to understand — with the next Dakar Rally in mind — what our race pace would be compared to some of the new, highly competitive cars. We realised that our pace was there. We were able to run at the front, but a few setbacks held us back. Today, we came out as spectators to Erg Chebbi to watch the other competitors and to support our fellow Portuguese drivers. Now, we’ll keep working — the Old Friends Rally Team is already focused, as always, on improving the car and developing new projects,” said the 26-year-old driver, who competed at the Rallye du Maroc behind the wheel of a Polaris RZR Pro.
“Even so, this rally was a positive one for us. Our goal was to test and prepare for Dakar, and we achieved that — we learned what still needs improvement. That work will continue all the way to the Dakar. We confirmed that we have the pace to fight at the front, and we’ll keep pushing to arrive at Dakar in top form and hopefully bring home another strong result,” he concluded.
Source: Old Friends Rally TEam Official press release
Translation and adaptation: Rally-Raid Network
