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Loprais remains loyal to the Praga brand at the Dakar Rally. Tománek winds up the Tatra Mountains

Aleš Loprais will drive a Praga truck for the second time at the Dakar Rally. His team will deploy two cars in Saudi Arabia in January. In the second truck – Tatra Jamal – Jan Tománek will return to the competition after a one-year break.

While the trio of Aleš Loprais, Chálid Kandí, Petr Pokora will sit in Prague V4S with a flattering low start number 504, the number 520 will have the crew of Jan Tománek, Tomáš Kašpárek, Jiří Stross on the door. She will ride with Loprais’ previous car, known as the Queen 69.

Tománek and Kašpárek met at the Dakar in one cabin in 2014, when they also started with Tatra from the Loprais Team workshops.

Tománek and Stross have also tried their hand at mutual cooperation at the most prestigious marathon rallies in the world in the recent past. In 2017, they together formed the crew of Aleš Loprais. He is glad to have helpers in the attack on the front rungs of the Saudi Dakar.

“It will definitely give me some peace and quiet, although on the special track you never know if the other car is a minute or an hour behind it. Anyway, it’s good to know that there is another car behind you that can provide you with a spare tire. it gives you the opportunity to speed up, because you can take more risks in places where you otherwise have to drive for sure, “says the 40-year-old rider.

In addition, Loprais will drive with the knowledge that, thanks to Tománek and Stross, there are also two very skilled mechanics sitting in the second car.

“Of course, an incredible amount of unforeseen things can happen to the Dakar, and in such situations there is no help for priceless. But having a friendly crew will be nice even before the start of the stages. Thanks to Jend, Tom and Jirka, we will have our own partners with whom even in such situations, we can talk about anything. It should be more comfortable, “explained the Olomouc native.

Due to developments around coronavirus, the Instaforex Loprais Praga Team had to give up the planned autumn testing in the Arabian Peninsula. At the beginning of November, the Prague V4S DKR last checked the competition in Poland. For the remaining weeks before leaving for France, the team dedicates packing and fine-tuning equipment to boarding the competition and accompanying cars.

“We only went for reliability, we didn’t deal with performance improvements or any major changes at all,” Loprais described the team’s year-round work on his Dakar special. “We’ve been paying attention to the things that bothered us this year. We’ve improved cab damping, cooling, electronics, intake, exhaust and turbocharger details.”

Nevertheless, Praga has one very interesting improvement. “A bigger novelty is the paddles under the steering wheel, which allow me to intervene in the shift of the automatic transmission at certain moments. These are not big changes, but should have a major impact on the consistency of our performance,” believes the rider, who celebrates his forty-first birthday .

During the competitive premiere of Prague’s V4S DKR Loprais at this year’s Dakar, he attacked medal positions for a long time. In the evaluation of the eighth stage, he advanced to the imaginary podium, but after the problems in the penultimate stage, the crew at the finish line was finally classified as seventh. The gained experience and knowledge gave the character of this year’s preparation, which the crew will try to turn again into an attack on the highest rungs of the truck category in January.

“We are going to Dakar with great humility and we want to enjoy it. At the same time, however, it is true that I can only enjoy the race if we fight in front. Otherwise, I just can’t do it,” Loprais added.

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