Cyril Despres wins the Rally of Morocco, followed by Joan Barreda

The French pilot Cyril Despres (KTM) claimed the final triumph in the Rally of Morocco, in which the Spanish Joan Barreda (Husqvarna) achieved second place 6.52 minutes behind the winner and if, as we already indicated, this Rally of Morocco is the dress rehearsal for the Dakar 2013, we can draw “roughly” the following conclusions. KTM is still one notch above its competitors, Husqvarna has taken a giant step towards being counted on the top positions and Honda, as expected, is also on track to be at the top of the classification.

Without a doubt, the keys to this 2012 edition of the Rally of Morocco have been Marc Coma's shoulder injury that will make things very difficult for him to be able to fight with a guarantee of success in the 2013 Dakar, and the events of the fourth stage In which Despres took advantage of the mechanical problems of the Portuguese Helder Rodrigues, who could not complete the fourth stage, to regain the leadership of the general, after being second 2 minutes behind the winner, the Polish Jakub Przygonski. From that stage and despite Joan Barreda in excellent shape he tried to attack Cyril Despres's position with all the means at his disposal, he could not help but secure his second place in the Rally.

As Joan Barreda himself had warned at the start of the last stage, the 171-kilometer special, they were not the most conducive to trying to eliminate the more than five minutes of disadvantage with which the Castellón started the final day. A circumstance that Cyril Despres did not miss, who not only kept his advantage, but increased it by almost a minute and a half. Second in the stage was the Spanish Joan Pedrero (KTM) who was relegated to more delayed positions since also in the fourth stage he made a navigation error that made him lose 20 minutes. Joan Pedrero was only surpassed in the special of this last day by the Portuguese Helder Rodrigues (Honda). Pedrero concluded the Rally of Morocco in eleventh position, one hour and 19 minutes behind Cyril Despres, who achieved his fourth win in the Rally of Morocco.