Desert Challenge starts in Morocco

13.4.2019

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New roadbooks, new bivouacs and 8 new stages. This year's 11th edition of the Morocco Desert Challenge will be completely different. However, the concept is the same - the crews go coast to coast, they start at the Atlantic coast this Saturday and finish exactly one week later at the Mediterranean Sea. Two trucks from North-Bohemian team MKR Technology will be there.

“In Morocco, we have historically managed to make it to the overall podium. Last year, the golden hat-trick was a few minutes away. Martin van den Brink finished second after two stages back-to-back and I believe that this year we will be able to continue the previous successes and triumph again. The trucks are ready and the pilots also”said Mario Kress, lead designer of Renault Trucks racing team.

Two K520 cab-over-engine specials will start the race this year, with Martin van den Brink from Mammoet Rallysport and Gert Huzink from Riwald Dakar. The brand new Morocco Desert Challenge will be a real challenge in the Moroccan desert. After the success of 2018 and the results of the recces, the organizers once again run the track with zero transfer parts from coast to coast: from Plage Blanche beaches at the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast. In eight racing days, crews will have to tackle more than two and a half thousand kilometers. Not only is the Morocco Desert Challenge an adventure full of surprises, with fast trails, technical parts, vast African plains, even more dunes, salt lakes and legendary Dakar stages, it also offers something truly unique to the organizers - zero connection and no traverses. “By doing so, the race has attracted great interest. It always starts and ends in a bivouac. Personally, I see a great advantage because we are in touch with the crews and we can start the service immediately,” said Mario Kress, who sent almost his entire team of technicians to Africa. On top of it, Daniel Kozlovský, from Roudnice will sit in the cabin again as an inboard technician after a one-year break.

This year's rally has already started with a technical handover in Agadir, one of Morocco's seaside resorts. On Saturday, the race will start with a 250 km prologue south of Agadir on the legendary Plage Blanche. Crews set will off with a low tide on a virgin white beach along the Atlantic coast. The first day will be a perfect show - the crews can look forward to the beaches, several dunes, WRC sections or gravel and sandy descents. The magnificent prologue, a little over two hundred kilometers long, will end up in Abetteh and, above all, it will test the trucks and determine the starting positions for the next day, when the measured special section will already have over four hundred kilometers.

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