Rain hits Dakar as Spaniard wins

Salta : Spain’s Joan Barreda won his second Dakar Rally 2017 stage yesterday in the moto category, as more wet weather played havoc with the gruelling race.

The Honda rider thundered across the 417km eighth stage from Uyuni in Bolivia to Salta in Argentina in 4hr 28min 21sec, ahead of the KTM duo of Matthias Walkner of Austria (3min 51sec behind) and Britain’s Sam Sunderland, who was three seconds behind his team-mate to retain the overall lead by 20 minutes.

Barreda was also victorious in last Wednesday’s third stage of a scheduled total of 12, but lost the overall lead of the motorcycle category after picking up an hour penalty for illegal refuelling in a subsequent stage.

Tuesday’s special took two hours longer than expected because of heavy rain that lashed the course and the race has been hampered in recent days by the weather.

The rain forced race officials to change the route of stage eight because of rising water levels in a river bed.

Peugeot driver Romain Dumas and his co-driver Alain Guehennec of France got stuck