Huzink makes a debut and wins
6.10.2016
The pilot Gert Huzink, taming a racing truck of the North Bohemia based MKR Technology, is enjoying a fantastic premiere. With the OiLibya Rally in Morocco at its half, the racer has celebrated two wins and occupies second place in the overall ranking so far.
Gert Huzink, pilot of the Dutch Riwald Dakar team, is racing on a brand new Renault Trucks truck built by the Židovice team of mechanics around the renowned constructor Mario Kress in the very first race. Indeed, he only first got into the cockpit two weeks ago in Senica, Slovakia, yet now he’s putting up an amazing performance with it in Morroco. “Gert still needs to get used to the ne w truck. But we can see already that the pilot and technology have clicked from the get-go. First reactions are extremely positive and Gert has been heaping praise on the machine. He’s still getting a grasp of it but he’s doing a very fine job. He‘s getting faster all the time, so the race so far has made us really cheerful,” commented Mario Kress, manager of the MKR Adventure project and chief constructor of MKR technology.
This year of the OiLibya Rally could not have started out in a better way. In the opening zeroo “Super“ stage, a 7km sprint, Huzink’s special dominated in the fastest time. In contrast, the first 70km stage around the city of Agadir, in which Huzink finished on fifth place with a thirty-minute loss on the winner Rotsaert from Belgium, has been the worst one so far. In the second special section, leading from Agadir to a bivouac at kilometre 291, Huzink arrived to the finish on second place. Afterwards, Riwald’s pilot managed to win the Wednesday’s third episode stretching over 315km from the bivouac to Erfoud. The crews have two racing days to go and Gert Huzink currently occupies second rank overall. The lead belongs to Belgium’s pilot Rotsaert with a 40-minute margin on Huzink. The Hungarian Fazekas on the third is losing more than one and half hours on the Dutch.
The rally consists of nearly nine hundred kilometers in total, out of which thirteen hundred form special sections. The winner will be knows on Friday. Last year‘s winner, Martin van den Brink driving MKR‘s truck, could not compete this time. However, another Renault Trucks by MKR Technology seems to be reaching for another excellent result in the prestigious distance rally. One of the crew members is the Roudnice based mechanic Daniel Kozlovský. “At the moment, result is not our main focus here. It is essential that Gert makes friends with the technology so to say and we get everything ready for the Dakar as best as we can. But of course, if we added a podium to that, it would be a cherry on top that would cheer up everyone and definitely motivate us further,“ smiled Mario Kress.
