Santolino runs out of gas 1 km from the finish line and you have to drag his motorcycle through the dunes

Lorenzo Santolino, that before stage 10 of the Dakar is on the border Top-10 In an edition of the toughest race in the world where he debuted his personal tally of stage wins, he lived a day to forget in Dakar 2025 on day 10 where he ran out of gas in the last part. Lorenzo had to drag his motorcycle for an hour in the soft sand, for more than a kilometer, arriving at the camp exhausted and giving up a lot of time, found himself relegated to 18th place of generally.

“My bike started to fail a bit and like it did to me the other dayThe truth is I didn’t think I was running out of gas because we had enough gas for the kilometers we were going to cover. “So, I thought there might be an injector failure, it’s a bit like the sensations I had the other day, so the bike suddenly stopped, and today, well, it crashed, came back and seemed to be more intermittent.”he explained Santolino.

“I changed pumps, one I didn’t, the other I did, so maybe one pump was losing pressure or something, and since I didn’t relax the speed either, I tried to shoot because of the last .I don’t think I’m doing it to win, but I’m not doing anything wrong either. So, I continued, started to fall a little bit until the bike stopped and nothing, I still had one kilometer to go, then I realized it was a fuel problem,” said a Lorenzo who revealed at the bivouac of Shubaytah that the failure was due to “a small crack in a tank that was not visible and probably caused the loss of some fuel”.

So, in the middle of the sands of ‘Empty Quarter’he has one checkpoint left to pass, but at the same time, he has to prioritize his arrival at the camp. I can go down the dunes, but not up them. Choosing the right path is key.

“Then the problem is I didn’t think I could run out of gas and if I had slowed down a bit I might have reached the end. After that, the truth is that it is quite difficult to get the bike out. Fortunately, we were near a ‘chott’ and with great effort I managed to get off, I passed a ‘waypoint’ which was at the top of the dunes and I pushed to the end.”argument

“It took me an hour and a bit, plus the waypoint penalty they gave me, but it was the only option. It was that or stay there waiting. At first I waited a little, but all the pilots I was on the train “I’m in a rush, everyone has to make time, so it’s normal that they won’t stop if you’re physically well,” he explained.

“The other option was to wait for someone to come, but I don’t know, it could still take another hour, because in the end until the pilots who will live the adventure arrive, who don’t look for time, it takes them , they leave one hour and peak later, including the time needed to cross the dunes, two hours is still the minimum, so I decided, to try to get the bike out as much as I can,” he said. graduated. And it went well in the mixed zone after the finish line of the two drivers.He accomplished his goal of continuing the race, though he was far from the 11th place he had occupied overall.

THE PHYSICAL EXERCISE OF RIDING A MOTORCYCLE IN THE DUNES

“Let’s see how I get up, because I arrived totally devastated, dead, I was here for half an hour until I got better a little, then I was at the medical center and they took my blood pressure and so on. It’s not perfect, but no “This is bad. They asked me if they wanted me to put on serums and stuff to rehydrate, and they told me a little bit about what I wanted, that it wasn’t too bad,” he commented.

“The problem was not that I was dehydrated, the problem was the effort I made. Yes, I was a little dehydrated, but the main problem was the big effort to push the bike. Now I feel better than when I arrived, but let’s see how I get up, depending on how I feel, tomorrow I’ll try to push a little or try to save the day, to see how I feel,” he concluded.