The Africa Eco Race began with a relatively short opening stage on Tuesday at just 47 kilometers in timed sections, though that didn’t make the terrain any less bearable.

The sand between the start in Tangier and the end in Tarda is extremely fine, which is difficult to ride a motorcycle through. Besides the desert dunes, truck racer Gerrit Zuurmond noticed vegetation and rocks that he compared to Rallye Breslau in Poland. Given there are nearly 90 bikes entered across all classes, this was bound to provide some challenges.

Compounding matters was over 700 kilometers in liaison, 173 of which was from the dock to the start. Once that was over, they had to complete an additional 534 km through the Atlas Mountains to reach the bivouac in relatively cold and dark weather.

“Today was much tougher than it looked on paper, and many riders lost a lot of time, so I am happy with finishing in third,” explained Pol Tarrés. “I made a small mistake with my navigation, but I did not lose much time, and I could make it up using the power of the Ténéré World Raid GYTR. Sometimes, having a bigger bike compared to the 450cc single-cylinder machines can be a disadvantage in such conditions as it can dig into the soft sand, but the team did a great job setting it up perfectly, allowing me to push as hard as I could.”

Defending winner Jacopo Cerruti paced the bikes, his time being 55 seconds faster than Tarrés’ Yamaha teammate Alesandro Botturi. Guillaume Borne was fourth, tops for 450cc bikes.

Pierre Lafay’s Can-Am Maverick R was quickest among the four-wheelers, beating the Toyota Hilux of Dakar veteran Magdalena Zajac in her first AER action. Tomáš Ouředníček, another Dakar regular-turned-Eco Race newcomer, was third among T1.1 cars after a navigation error caused him to miss a turn.

Zuurmond and Rainbow Truck Team finished four minutes back in T5 in their maiden Eco Race stage.

Leaders after Stage #1

Moto

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
450cc	4	9	Guillaume Borne	BB Racing Team	42:15
Over 450cc	20	19	Francesco Puocci	Team Puocci	53:43
Multi-Cylinder (650cc–1000cc)	1	1	Jacopo Cerruti	Aprilia Racing GCorse	38:33
Multi-Cylinder (Over 1000cc)	8	5	Joan Pedrero	Harley-Davidson	46:59
Quad	54	99	Laurent Hellemans	Hellau	1:07:29

Auto

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
T1.1	2	204	Magdalena Zajac	Proxcars TME Rally Team	40:17
T1.3	4	200	Benoit Fretin	Century Racing	42:15
T5.1	7	401	William van Groningen	Dust Warriors	44:12
SSV	1	251	Pierre Lafay	Team Gazzafond	39:53

Historic

Class	Number	Driver	Team	Points
Low Average	302	Fabrice Morin	YDEO Competition	129
Intermediate Average	300	Éric Claeys	Claeyson	8

Featured image credit: Yamaha Racing