Huzink opened the Moroccan rally just below the podium
15.10.2023
It looked like North Bohemian truck pilot Gert Huzink would arrive for the podium in the 1st stage of the Moroccan rally. He ended up finishing just short of it when he got stuck in treacherous dunes while chasing victory.
"Gert was first stopped by a puncture of the front tire, then he got stuck in the dunes and to make matters worse, even though he fought his way to the leading position, he couldn't find one of the waypoints. His search ultimately cost him the podium. It was not a happy day, but the machine is working well and the next days are ahead of us," the chief designer of Huzink's racing Renault truck, Mario Kress from the MKR Technology team, described the unlucky events of the 1st stage of this year's Rally Morocco.
Right at the beginning, the crews had to tackle the longest stage of this year. Over seven hundred kilometers awaited them on the route from Agadir to Zagora, including 311 kilometers of timed sections. But the stage was extremely varied. Riders had to deal with rocky terrain, but also sand dunes. It was there, where the pilot of the Dutch team Riwald Dakar lost a valuable quarter of an hour and thus lost the desired victory. In the end, it was the Czech pilot Martin Macík who won again, ahead of his compatriot Tomáš Vrátný. Gert Huzink was just fifteen minutes behind in 4th position. Overall classification is also similar, in which Gert Huzink is fifth with an added penalty of one hour.
The teams will stay in the bivouac in Zagora for the next two days. Sunday's 2nd stage is a loop with a total length of almost four hundred kilometers, which includes 288 km of timed sections.
