Even with the help of the longest measured section of this year’s Dakar, the entire caravan moved to Riyadh on Wednesday, where it will anchor for the next few days. Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka defeated 465 sharp kilometers as the fifteenth fastest, but unfortunately they were given a seven-minute penalty for exceeding the speed limit on the crossing section. She moved them to 23rd place in the stage and eighth place in the overall classification.
Martin Prokop said about the fourth stage of this year’s Dakar: “Today the wind blew in our backs in fast sections, so we didn’t have such problems with the engine and we got to the limiter. It was a fast stage, but much more complicated than the previous ones. There were a lot of dangerous places in it and we had a big crisis at about the twentieth kilometer, when we drove about a hundred meters off the track and drove into big holes. Fortunately, we did not overturn at great speed, but the whole situation frightened us solidly and forced us to continue to be very careful. The pace was huge all day, it was fast and had to navigate very fast. Thanks to good navigation, we were able to download some faster cars. Heavier, unpredictable dunes have already appeared there, which cars and motorcycles can take up. In short, it was not an easy day and I am glad that this year’s Dakar is finally becoming heavier and more difficult to navigate. “
The crew received a seven-minute penalty for speeding in the crossing sections. There were two crossings, with the crew receiving two minutes for the first and five minutes for the second. But Prokop decided to protest against the five-minute protest. “She was speeding, which we thought was weird. We started studying it and according to the onboards we found out that we did not exceed it at all. Here we brought this evidence to the organizers, we basically filed a protest and we do not agree with the penalty, so we are fighting to get it back to us. “ said Martin Prokop and added: “We’ll have to come to terms with the little one, because we went there fast.”
Viktor Chytka explained why this happened. According to him, the speed limit was in a place where there was nothing around. Previously, the crew of the racing Ford drove at really high speeds and had only 180 meters to brake. Even because the wind “blew in their backs”, it allegedly failed. The total loss in the first stage was in the fourth stage a noticeable 25 minutes and 40 seconds, including the calculated penalty.
