Quote Originally Posted by gorganl2000 View Post
may be you are correct

however, i can sympathize with the desire to push for the win in this case as this is now his 4th attempt at the annual event and he already has a prior 2nd place. From the early technical glitch he was over 30 mins off the lead by stage 3. There are always risks in pushing so hard; sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. Dakar is a long rally and anything can happen to any competitor at any time and he needed to be in a position to capitalize on that opportunity if it arose---in this case, being in 2nd place and as close to N. Al-Attiyah as possible.

plus it makes the rally more exciting too
actually at first stages he didnt pushed,but when problems appeared,he hadnt got to do something else but to push to regain the gap.
He managed to very few minutes to Nasser,but problems appeared again.
Thats rallying/racing.
Also we have to mention that he had old model peugeot and not the maxi peugeot from last year,which was a better/faster evolution