The W2RC has ventured into new terrain with the Sonora Rally debuting in the championship. This year's W2RC has been to Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi for round one and round two respectively.
The Sonora Rally began on April 22 and ends today. The Rally has received a lot of backlash as riders complained about an erroneous road book. Branch is among a list of less than 40 world elite bikers as he looks to better his W2RC standings.
He is sitting eighth in the overall championship standings. Branch was 11th at the Dakar Rally held in January before he finished fifth at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. The two first rounds have accumulated 19 points for the Jwaneng native and trails the championship leader, Toby Price by 27 points. The Kalahari Ferrari did not have the best start in Sonora.
He lost a bit of time after he had a navigation error just 50km into the rally and he finished miles off the top finishers. In stage two, Branch recovered his lost time superbly and finished the day in position five. While Branch did well, stage two of the Sonora proved to be unkind to the competitors as the two top riders retired from the race. It was the longest stage of the rally and it totalled 541km. The 2022 Sonora Rally champion, Skyler Howes and this year's favourite, Sam Sunderland crashed halfway through stage two.
Several riders complained about the 'sketchy' road book on the day as they said it lacked danger notes of the terrain. "There were a lot of dangerous points in the road book and some were not marked. The two riders who were in front of me crashed and for this reason, I was not confident about the road book. So I decided to play safe and rode carefully until the end. In my opinion, the road book was not good, but this is racing and we have to adapt," French biker, Adrien Van Beveren was quoted after stage three.
Branch did adapt but fell a few places below as he was number eight after stage three held on Wednesday. The biker was provisionally sitting on the eighth spot yesterday on stage four. He stands a chance to finish in the top 10 and could crack inside the top five places in the W2RC overall standings.
