Ultimate Dakar racing team
Dakar 2024: Successful finish of a difficult race
Toyota Gazoo Racing Czech crew Tomas Ourednicek and David Kripal successfully finished Stage 12 and, thus, the 46th Dakar Rally. Tomas and David decided to take a rather cautious approach, arriving 42nd on the last special stage and finishing the rally in 39th place overall.
“Today was the last day, with a shorter special stage, but it was not easy at all. We saw vehicles that got into huge trouble, Eugenio Amos had a really big crash. We tried to be cautious but still hit a big stone. We had to reduce the pace, but finally we reached the finish line.
Overall, this was a very difficult race for us. At the Dakar, if you start from the back of the field once, it’s very difficult to get back to the front because you keep doing part of the stage in the dark, and that slows you down. And this is what happened to us right in the prologue when a French car crashed into us. Our race was somewhat doomed at that early moment because we had to start on Stage 1 behind almost everyone.
After the 48-hour chrono stage, we received a huge penalty. I think that was not fair because we were told by the organizers to stop for the night. The final blow came yesterday, when another French crew crashed into us, this time from the back.
Our goal for this Dakar was to make as many kilometers as possible. We had only one race with this car before, this was our first time with it in the dunes. The most important was to stay in the race, learn about the car, figure out what is what, understand every single noise it makes. And we did exactly that. We had some navigation issues, but the car performed perfectly throughout the race,” Tomas Ourednicek said after the finish of the 2024 Dakar Rally.
