Van den Brink in Stage 5 on 7th position
10.1.2020
All four North Bohemian Renaults finished the very heavy difficult stage unscathed. Although each of the crews of special trucks from Židovice not only had to fight with a number of defects, van den Brink’s truck in Russian-dominated fifth stage eventually reached the seventh fastest time.
“We have not only had a difficult night when none of us slept to prepare the trucks for the morning start, but we also a busy day is behind us. But I'm happy that the boys always return to the bivouac in the complete lineup. Everyone is going great and if there is a problem, they slow down and don’t panic. Everything can be solved, and it is their caution that is helping us. Thanks to this, we are going very well, even though we have still not reached a podium yet, but we still have a lot of time,” Mario Kress, head of the MKR Technology design team, said after finishing the 5th stage.
And there was a lot of troubles, they had to cope with during the 5th stage. They had so many flat tires and the first hybrid truck in the competition had also a bad luck. But this time, the crew had to slow down not because of technical issue. “Gert's crew has a really bad luck. First, they tore a tire, they replaced it, and after a while at one of the dune descents, the truck recoiled unexpectedly and Martin Roesink's back got blocked. It is not serious, but due to great pains they had to slow down and go considerably more carefully. When they had another flat tire, they could change it only in two persons and that is, of course, slower,” Mario Kress explained the reason for the one-hour loss of the most watched truck and added that the onboard technician is now in the hands of a physiotherapist.
The fifth stage of three hundred and fifty kilometers from Al Ula to Ha'il produced almost the same podium as the previous one. The only change is that the third Sotnikov exchanged position with the first Karginov. The second was Shibalov, again. And so, for the second time, the three Kamaz trucks took over the entire podium. Martin van den Brink, pilot of the North Bohemian truck in the colors of the Mammoet Rallysport team, had a gap of an hour to the best riders. After several flat tires, Pascal de Baar finished sixteenth, just behind him was the hybrid crew with Gert Huzink. "Fireman" Richard de Groot was classified two positions down the ranking.
Russian Karginov remains at the top of overall classification. The best North Bohemian truck from MKR Technology with Pascal de Baar crew is still holding eighth place. Both Martin van den Brink, now thirteenth, and de Groot, now sixteenth, moved up one position in the ranking.
The big change will come in Friday's 6th stage, which takes place completely in the sand and dune lovers will have an advantage. What is more, everyone will have to deal with the second longest stage. They will need to cover almost four hundred and eighty kilometers of timed sections and eight hundred and thirty kilometers in total. After this stage over a well-deserved day off in the bivouac of Riyadh will come.
