KTM Australia rider Toby Price has moved into third in the standings of the 2015 Dakar Rally, as he successfully completed the second and final marathon stage of the world’s biggest off-road race with the fifth fastest time.

The 11th stage of the 14-day, 9000-kilometre epic was a 512km journey from Salta to Termas Rio Hondo, and saw previous race leader Joan Barreda win from Paolo Goncalves and Slovakian Ivan Jakes, with Ruben Faria leading Price home by approximately 34 seconds.

Toby Price: “Two days is still a long way to go. We’re just trying to do the best we can, stay fit and healthy, keep the bike in good shape and that’s been my plan the whole way. Today was not so bad. It wasn’t extremely fast but you couldn’t afford to run wide on turns. It was just a good clean day.”

KTM’s reigning Dakar champion Marc Coma still leads the event after more than 41 hours and 43 minutes of competitive stage racing, the Spaniard holding a gap of just over five minutes to Goncalves.

The battle for third in the Dakar heated up overnight, with Price making 1m56s on Pablo Qunitanilla who finished seventh in the stage, to overhaul and stretch a 1m32s gap over the Chilean with two days of racing remaining.

With almost two weeks of fatigue and many thousands of kilometres behind them, competitors will receive no respite in tomorrow’s penultimate stage of the event.

A full 1000-kilometre day from Termas Rio Hondo to Rosario will provide the sting the Dakar’s tail and illustrate one more time, if further illustration is needed, the toughness of this event.