Rest for crews, lots of work for mechanics. The 2nd part of Dakar is about to begin!
This year’s Dakar Rally is halfway through. There are only six more tricky stages remaining and the Buggyra Racing team is trying to be prepared as much as possible. Both vehicles, Tatra Phoenix and the new Can-Am Buggyra MK50 XRS went through a scheduled service.
Martin Šoltys, David Schovánek and Tomáš Šikola are currently in the TOP 10 in the Truck category. The TATRA Buggyra Racing team driver was trying to spend the free day by relaxing, to gain strength for the second half of the competition. “I’m very happy with the TOP 10, considering how difficult this Dakar is. That was our target and we’re there. Our strategy for the second half is not going to be any different, we don’t want to hurt ourselves or the vehicle. There should be more sand stages and dunes and I’m glad about that. We’ve had enough of the rocks. Today, we had time to sleep. I went through the bivouac and got in touch with my family,” described Šoltys his day.
The team can be also happy about its new SSV category entry. The new vehicle, driven by a Dakar legend and five-time winner, is reliable and is gathering lots of valuable data. “I’m glad that today marks the first successful half of our testing objective. And that we’re actually here, despite it didn’t look so well after the first few kilometres. Actually, it was only one issue, though it affected our performance for the following days as we had to start from the back. I’m happy about how we work together with the navigator and also with the whole team, with such a commitment,” said Josef Macháček who drives together with Vlastimil Tošenovský.
Despite he had his hands full throughout the day, David Vršecký still found some time to review the first half of the competition.
“As always, free days on Dakar are the busiest ones in the service. I’m quite happy with how the Can-Am is holding up. Of course, it’s our new project and we learn every day. We have great feedback from Josef, he’s a brilliant driver with so much experience. With Martin Šoltys, we’ve been trying to slow him down since the beginning, so he doesn’t get provoked by faster drivers in front and I think he has a good starting point now. Now it’s going to be about dunes. If you get stuck there, you will lose a lot of time, so it’s still quite open,” said the chief designer of Buggyra Racing team.
The Dakar Rally continues on Sunday. The next stage is 741 kilometres long, out of which 546 kilometres will be timed. It will be the longest stage of the competition and once again, the organisers are warning teams about dunes and tricky navigation.
