The Best Czech Truck at the Dakar Rally is from Židovice
21.1.2016
The best Czech-born racer of this year’s Dakar was Jaroslav Valtr on eighth place. However, the best Czech truck actually finished two ranks ahead of him. On sixth position at the finish in Rosario was the Dutch pilot Pascal de Baar on a truck constructed by the North Bohemia based MKR Technology team. Moreover, the team of Czech mechanics and constructors around the project’s boss Mario Kress provided him with technical assistance during the 38th year of the world’s toughest rally. And so the best Czech truck was actually the Renault Trucks number 529.
After leaving the scene of the European Truck Racing Championship two years ago, the Czech team introduced their MKR Adventure project and built two Dakar specials of their own. For the first time these started at the Dakar last year and were piloted by the Dutch pilots of the Mammoet Rallysport team Martin van den Brink and Pascal de Baar. Despite this being their premiere, both trucks made it to the finish without any major technical issues and occupied seventeenth and thirty-first place respectively. “This time our ambition was higher though. We wanted to make it to the top ten,“ revealed Mario Kress, MKR Technology chief constructor and owner.
That this plan could actually work out was hinted by the “rehearsal“ race, the Moroccan OiLibya Rally, in which the team achieved its first-ever title in a rally competition thanks to Martin van den Brink. Only a few weeks before the Dakar’s start this was an extraordinary success. “However, it was necessary for us to keep our feet on the ground. Dakar is a whole other race. Very long and very, very hard one. Rather than about the teams being prepared and the technology it is about luck. Of course you couldn’t do without the former, but we definitely didn’t want to make any bold claims. It’s too soon for that because at this point, we haven’t gone as far with the technology development as I would like to, and so our main goal was ranking in the top ten,“ commented Kress.
Anyway, Dakar had an extremely dramatic start. The introductory prologue, which was supposed to establish the order of the trucks for stage one was cancelled by the organizers because of an accident caused by a passenger car which hit the spectators. Although the initial news sounded tragically, the accident only left four people injured. The following stage one was cancelled by the organizers due to heavy rain. The crews only started racing in stage two and it was then when the disastrous event came – as a result of an overheated brake, Martin van den Brink’s truck hit a wall and after stopping, it caught fire. All that was left was a scorched wreck. Unfortunately, van den Brink was supposed to be the one leading the team, with Pascal de Baar providing him support. “You can’t really distinguish it this way, it’s not decided in advance who the leader will be. It was supposed to show during the race, but both of them were supposed to support each other as much as possible, with Martin being the one in the front thanks to his better start. Putting aside our friends and partners from the allied Bonver Dakar Project and Gert Huzink, for whom we prepared engines, we suddenly had only one truck on the track,“ explained Mario Kress.
Although the troublesome event hit the team hard, it was Pascal de Baar who improved the atmosphere immediately, assuming the leader’s position very smoothly. Already in stage three he finished on a solid position twelve and first got into the top ten of the overall ranking. He managed to stay there almost for the rest of the competition, when he coped with tyre defects. Throughout the race he would finish around tenth place in the stages, and it was not until stage ten that the great sensation came – Pascal de Baar won the worst stage of this year’s rally. In the dunes, where many were losing their way or got stuck in the sand, it was the pilot on the North-Bohemian truck who gave a spotless performance. His victory at the Dakar stage was a premiere for him as well as the MKR Technology team, Mammoet Rallysport and above all, Renault Trucks. “It took us some time to believe it. After all we went through we showed clearly that we had what it took for our special to stand side by side with the best ones and sweep victories. The emotions this achievement brought are hard to describe, it was a great euphoria,“ commented Mario Kress, taking a look back.
Victory in the tenth special section shot the crew to sixth place in the overall ranking. Eventually, the team did not miss their chance and stuck to it until they reached the finishing line in Rosario. “We didn’t take any risks, we weren’t going full speed, but with caution. It made no sense to us hunting down seconds, because it could have meant losing even more. Thanks to this approach have a reason to celebrate in the finish,“ said the satisfied Kress.
That was the thirty-eighth chapter of the Dakar saga, which had a happy ending. Out of the six trucks that received technical support from MKR Technology, four of them successfully finished the rally. Unfortunately, the race ended prematurely for Martin van den Brink and Gert Huzink, but Renault with de Baar reached the above mentioned sixth rank and great results were recorded also by the trio of Bonver Dakar Project’s Tatras, too. Kazakhstan’s Ardavichus was eleventh by a very narrow margin, Tomáš Vrátný sixteenth as the second best Czech and there was also the hero from Andorra Albert Llovera on thirty-fifth place, who became the first handicapped pilot to have ever finished the Dakar in spite of the fact that he turned over his special in stage eleven and had to spend the night in dunes without anyone knowing whether he would be able to continue. “His resolve and the willpower to fight was unbelievable. Lot of people in his situation would give it up and stop. I’m proud that we could be a part of his story and that we were able to deal with all the obstacles at the Dakar. The true strength is not in an individual, but in a team formed by several strong individuals. Thanks to that Dakar worked out great, because some moments were incredibly hard and I’m grateful to everyone for sticking together. This helped us leave our mark in history,“ thanked the moved Mario Kress to his team mates.
