After a disastrous day on Monday on the way to Iquique losing more than three hours, Helder Rodrigues reacted like a champion in Calama with a splendid and irrefutable Dakar stage victory.

Second placed Paulo Gonçalves maintained the pressure on Marc Coma, however out of the reckoning for the general standings, Rodrigues has nothing to lose.

The Team HRC rider had ample scope to go on all-out attack over the 450km special finishing in Calama to open up a major gap on his rivals. In full control, the two times stage winner on the Dakar 2015 finished almost four minutes ahead of the runner-up, his teammate Paulo Gonçalves.

This was of no worry to the second placed rider in the general standings however, since he was satisfied with regaining 3m43s from Marc Coma and now seems to be the only rider able to trouble the KTM rider after nine stages.

It should be said that with the day’s third placed finish, Coma was able to grin and bear it, distancing Pablo Quintanilla a little more before having to deal with the problem of Gonçalves.

Finishing 23m15s behind the stage winner, the Chilean suffered a major blow, as did Toby Price who lost more than 23 minutes after a number of navigational errors. He finished eighth for the stage, but made a small amount of ground on Chilean Pablo Qunitanilla, who currently stands between him and a spectacular podium position in his maiden Dakar.

Keeping up with the pace on the first half of the special, Joan Barreda finally finished almost 19m47s behind Gonçalves, whilst Javier Pizzolito and Stefan Svitko, respectively fifth and sixth, were also more than 20 minutes off the pace.

As for Laia Sanz and Juan Pedrero, their performances today were nothing like yesterday, finishing 43m20s and an hour, eight minutes behind the stage winner.

Llewellyn Sullivan-Pavey had a strong finish on stage nine in 63rd, which places him 59th overall, while Simon Pavey followed in his tyre tracks in 64th and is now 61st overall.

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