Kozlovský’s crew perfectly coped with the painful stage

13.1.2021

For the second time this year, the Czech-Dutch crew of the red Renault of the Mammoet Rallysport team reached their stage best result. Daniel Kozlovský from Roudnice with pilot Martin van den Brink finished the 9th Dakar stage on seventh position. And despite a number of punctures, the second truck from Židovice with Pascal de Baar also tackled one of the most difficult stages.

"This stage was rightly described as one of the most difficult. It was, as in Morocco, very rough. It hurt terribly. The truck would have gone faster, but this was simply not possible. But all evil is good for something. By voluntarily slowing down and not rushing so much, we avoided punctures and navigation errors. We have overtaken a number of crews who had overtaken us before,"  Daniel Kozlovský, the on-board technician of the race truck no. 506, described the ninth special section.

Pain was a crucial determinant of Tuesday's stage and Martin van den Brink's crew. The pilot therefore tried to eliminate all risks. "During one jump yesterday, our navigator Wouter de Graaff hit his head and had a minor concussion. Today, he could feel every bump that made him dizzy. He literally cried into the intercom virtually the whole stage. That's why Martin really tried to drive very moderately and I needless to say that I was happy for that too. It really hurt a lot today," said Kozlovský, who returned to the cabin after two years. "It's not because of my racing break. We are driving a brand new truck, we still have to fine-tune the suspension. That car behaves completely different than we were used to, but we'll get into it. It just takes time," explained the Roudnice mechanic, who is currently in the eighth position.

The stage, which was a loop along the Red Sea coast with a start and finish in Neom, has a Czech winner - driver Martin Macík. The seventh van den Brink lost twenty minutes and the fourteenth de Baar, due to a number of punctured tires and the associated problems, lost almost two hours. However, the crew of the white Renault of the Riwald Dakar team is still holding the 11th place.

Wednesday's 10th stage from Neom to Al-ʻUla will be less than six hundred kilometers long and the timed section will be less than three hundred and fifty kilometers long. Again, it will be very hard, rugged, but attractive for in valleys.