Buggyra Flies to Dakar! Team Celebrates New Year ´s Eve in Plane
After Christmas spent by the members of the TATRA Buggyra Racing team with their families the time came to pack the luggage and leave for Buenos Aires where the Dakar Rally will start on 3 January. Martin Kolomý and his team thus celebrated New Year ´s Eve over the Atlantic.
Dakar Rally start falls on the beginning of the New Year but Christmas is the time Martin Kolomý traditionally spends with his family. "No bone getting stuck in the throat and so the Christmas dinner passed without any health impairment,“ said the smiling Martin Kolomý after arrival at the Václav Havel Airport in Prague. "Christmas time is not a time of rest for me. It is the time when the trucks are already away and we need not work on the technology and so I try to spend time with our partners and all who support us. As the truck shows we do not only have a single partner but a number of partners and it is quite demanding to pay appropriate attention to each of them before departure, especially in the Christmas time. To tell the truth I am looking forward to leaving for America but on the other hand if it were not for all those who help us we would spend New Year ´s Eve at home which I would not be too happy about,“ says the pilot of the Fat Boy with a smile. "This year we will celebrate New Year ´s Even in the plane but the party will not be any hilarity for there are obligations waiting for us right after landing. But I think the flight will be merry anyway. Thanks to the time shift some individuals can celebrate arrival of the New Year several times in a row.“
The Racing and accompanying technology left Europe as soon as in late November and three weeks later the machines arrived at the Euroamerica Port. "Even though most of our team will leave for Buenos Aires on 31 December, part of the members already left on 28 December. They had to collect our trucks in the port and transfer them to the bivouac, where on 2 January we will take them over, check the technology and prepare them for the ceremonial start on the following day,“ explained the TATRA Buggyra Racing team manager Jan Kalivoda about the logistics of the event.
Martin Kolomý will be assisted in the race truck cockpit by Kilián brothers David and René as traditionally. The brothers possess extensive experience and big ambition. David is an experienced navigator making use of knowledge from domestic automobile races at Dakar and like his brother René, who takes care of the technology of Tatra 815 Buggyra, knowing Tatra as profoundly as the mechanics. "It is the readiness of the boys to work in the workshop in addition to sitting in the cockpit that makes them a top crew. The three of them are a highly harmonious team perfectly complementing each other,“ says the technical director of the TATRA Buggyra Racing team Robin Dolejš with a smile.
New developments of the thirty seventh Dakar Rally in the truck category include the "marathon stage" scheduled for 10 and 11 January. This means that in those two days the crews will have to do without their mechanics and the assistance car. "We will only see on the spot what this will be like. But we know we will need to pack more tools and sleeping bags to have somewhere to sleep in,“ said David Kilián with expectations.
