Sport
Sport Tosha Schareina wins the Ruta 40 Challenge and Luciano Benavides new leader of the World Cup
Sport The Spaniard achieves his first World Cup victory and the Argentine is close to achieving his first title.
The Spanish Tosha Schareina has overwhelmingly won the Ruta 40 Challengefourth and penultimate test of the Mundial de Rally Raid 2023where the RallyGP leadership passes into the hands of the Argentine Luciano Benavidessecond in the home match with the American Ricky Brabec completing the podium.
Schareina’s is the first Spanish victory in the specialty world championship since the one achieved by Joan Pedrero in the Sardinia Rally 2016.
Without the local idol Kevin Benavides, absent due to injurythe prologue in La Rioja began the raid with a 9-kilometre special where Adrian Van Beveren He won with a time of 6:48, with which he beat Luciano Benavides by one second, Ricky Brabec and Matthias Walkner by two, and two pilots who would soon acquire great prominence by three: Tosha Schareina and Toby Price.
First was Schareina winning the first stage, a loop in La Rioja with a 333-kilometre special that the Spaniard covered in 3 hours and 12 seconds, leading Benavides by 17 seconds and Van Beveren by 1:33, with Price fourth at 3:17 to manage his income in the World Cup overall. The bad news was that Matthias Walkner was left for 45 minutes after hitting a rock and losing the rear ‘mousse’.
That was just an appetizer of bad luck for KTM, since in the second stage Price suffered mechanical problems and Walkner had to leave his parts. The Austrian was forced to abandon and the Australian gave up more than an hour compared to the winnerwhich again became Tosha Schareina.
The Honda rider, thanks to time compensation for opening the track, set a time of 3 hours, 27 minutes and 40 seconds in the 339-kilometre special between La Rioja and Belén and endorsed 4:42 to Luciano Benavides -who was 4:43 behind overall- and 7:39 to Brabec, with Van Beveren maintaining third place overall at 13:20 behind Schareina.
With 265 kilometers of special and start and finish in Bethlehem, the third stage was again for Schareina with a time of 2 hours, 58 minutes and 13 seconds. Like the day before Benavides and Brabec finished second and third at 1:40 and 1:52, the American moving to third place overall at 22:40 beating Ross Branch and Adrien Van Beveren on a day when Sam Sunderland was leaving.
Schareina started the fourth stage with 6:23 over Luciano Benavides, who cut the gap to 5:47 by winning the fourth stageagain a loop in Bethlehem with a 345-kilometre special that he covered in 2 hours, 53 minutes and 37 seconds to beat Schareina by 36 seconds and Brabec by 1:46, thus propping up the podium by leading by more than six minutes to Branch.
The raid ended as it began, with Adrien Van Beveren winning the special of 258 kilometers between Belén and Salta with a record of 2 hours, 39 minutes and 44 seconds to surpass Branch in 58 seconds and Brabec in 1:39, all thanks to a 6-minute penalty for Price, who had been the most fast.
calmly he took it Tosha Schareina, who managed her margin well to take the final victory ahead of Luciano Benavides, who has chained three consecutive podium finishes and is the overall leader. The podium closed it Ricky Brabec in front of Ross Branch and Adrien Van Beveren, which retains options in general. Finally ninth finished Toby Price, seventh among the RallyGP; while the South African Bradley Cox won in Rally2.
Sport RESULTS AND GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
Luciano Benavides has 9 points on Toby Price and 14 on Adrien Van Beveren:
