Ultimate Dakar racing team
Dakar 2024: Day of helping hands for Ourednicek and Kripal
The first part of the marathon stage is completed: Tomas Ourednicek and David Kripal from Toyota Gazoo Racing Czech successfully finished the third stage of the 46th Dakar Rally without encountering major issues. However, not everyone was as fortunate; the Toyota Hilux crew extended helping hands to two vehicles that rolled during the special stage. Currently placed 44th in the unofficial classification, Tomas and David are expected to regain some time. Overall, they maintain the 34th position.
“It was definitely a difficult one. There were a lot of stones at the beginning. The car was working perfectly, but the starting position was bad. We had to overtake loads of cars, but the thick dust made it impossible. So we kept getting stuck in the dust, although our pace was good.
Then came the fast tracks, which was great. Later, there were dunes. I was not expecting dunes, and these were not easy ones. Our pressure in the tires was high, so I was really afraid, but we managed it with no problem.
After one dune, we saw that Karel Trneny’s vehicle flipped over. Naturally, we stopped to help. Thankfully, the crew is okay. I have no idea about the condition of the car, but given that today is the marathon stage, it will be challenging for Karel to finish.
Later, there was a section with stones and riverbeds, and about 10 kilometers before the finish, we saw another vehicle on its roof, so we assisted them as well. It was an SSV from the Energylandia team.
We lost some time with that, but hopefully, we’ll get that back. This will be maybe nine minutes or something like that.
There is some damage on our car because in the dust I noticed too late that we were too close to a tree. I managed to avoid that, but I hit another on the right side. However, there’s no major problem,” Tomas Ourednicek said after the finish of the special stage.
“Navigation was very challenging again today, but we made no mistakes. There was a lot of dust, and we had to overtake many cars. We assisted two vehicles that rolled, Karel Trneny and an SSV. Fortunately, both crews are okay,” David Kripal added.
