Second gold for MKR takes Martin van den Brink
17.4.2018
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Second stage and second victory! North-Bohemian trucks are starting the Moroccan rally big. This time Martin van den Brink is happy with gold, as he totally owned the longest stage of tenth edition of Morocco Desert Challenge and moved into overall lead.
“Martin enjoyed this stage a lot. He went without any problems. In the middle of the special section, after some two hundred kilometres, the organizers prepared a shorter siesta, where Martin managed to change his tire and then could hurry on. According to the state of the cockpit, it was a hard stony stage and Janus learned this the hard way, “ told Daniel Kozlovský, technician of North-bohemian MKR Technology team.
Winner of the first stage and Martin van den Brink’s team-mate from Mammoet Rally Sport team, Janus van Kasteren, probably took all the bad luck on this stage. He had astonishing six flat tires and due to the troubles with axles, he had to detach 4x4 drive a made the finish line only using rear axle. In the end, he had lost five hours. “It is a huge portion of bad luck, but this can happen to anyone. Luckily, it is nothing serious and we will repair the truck by morning, so they will be ready with power for the third stage.”Kozlovský added.
Second stage from Plage Blanche to Touzounin, with its 470 kilometres was the longest stage in this edition. Crews had to fight with rocky ascends and fast technical traverses. But the longest special section made very well to Martin van den Brink. His advantage over second Voerman was five minutes and over twenty minutes on third Loprais. The third of the pilots from Northern Bohemia, Gerd Huzink from Riwald Dakar team was closing the TOP 5.
Van den Brink moved into the overall lead, Huzink is fourth and unlucky van Kasteren is twenty-fourth.
Third stage with its three hundred and forty five kilometres is third longest. Crews will go from Touzounine into Jewish dunes of Erg Lihoudi. The stage will belong to the brave ones. It starts with legendary Dakar route, will cross the biggest military zone of southern Morocco and then crews have to fight with sand dunes of Erg Chigaga. “The atmosphere in bivouac is like in a family, food is great, everyone is happy, so I believe, that we will successfully tackle the next stage as well. It will be very tough,”Daniel Kozlovský remarked with a smile.
