Dakar 2016: Barreda Fumbles Despite Winning Stage 4; CS Santosh Suffers Too

After a long and gruelling day of pushing limits, stage 4 of Dakar 2016 ended with Joan Barreda Bort winning in this stage. However, his celebrations will be a little low-key as he faces his second penalty in two days whereby the penalty of 5 minutes has put him in the fourth place in the stage and third overall. While he killed the stage with a smashing 4:05:30, he will now have 4:10:30 on the official record after the penalty.

Our very own CS Santosh started today's stage at 61 after yesterday's commendable performance. With a start such as that, one expected Santosh to keep the pace going and improve. However due to reasons still unknown, Santosh lost over half an hour in the first session of the stage. This has cost him his ranking and is now at 127 in this stage after coming in at 6:52:25. His overall ranking has now changed to 117. While this surely puts a dampener in the spirits, one keeps the faith that in the next few days CS Santosh on his Suzuki 450 Rally will keep climbing the ladder and continue to keep things alive.

After Stage 4 of Dakar 2016, this is how the overall standings look like:

1. Paulo Goncalves (Honda) - 10:35:17

2. Kevin Benavides (Honda) - 10:37:34

3. Joan Barreda (Honda) - 10:38:20

4. Stefan Svitko (KTM) - 10:40:39

5. Ruben Faria (Husqvarna) - 10:40:41

6. Matthias Walkner (KTM) - 10:42:25

7. Toby Price (KTM) - 10:43:13

8. Pablo Quintanilla (Husqvarna) - 10:43:39

9. Antoine Meo (KTM) - 10:46:12

10. Alain Duclos (Sherco TVS) - 10:46:28